Inspector Queen’s Own Case

The opportunity came two nights later. Cullum drove Alton Humffrey out to Oyster Bay to visit friends. The women on the staff had been given the night off.

The raiding party gained entrance to the Park Avenue building by way of an adjoining roof and a boarded-up penthouse. They got into the Humffrey apartment through the service door.

“No ripping, tearing or smashing,” Richard Queen ordered. “But give it a real going-over.”

They found nothing — no gun, no love letters, no receipted bills that tied in with Connie Coy, no correspondence with Finner... not a scrap of evidence to link Alton Humffrey with the murdered girl, or the murdered lawyer, or for that matter with the murdered baby.

The phone rang at three in the morning.

“Mr. Queen?” said a familiar nasal voice.

“Yes.” He was wide-awake instantly.

“I’m disappointed in you.”

“Are you, now.”

“Did you really think you’d find anything in my apartment that could possibly nourish your fantasies?”

“For the record, Mr. Humffrey,” Richard Queen said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes. Well.” Humffrey sounded nasty but amused. “When you get over your attack of amnesia, you might take stock. Having me followed, ransacking my apartment, investigating my past — none of it will get you anywhere. You’re in a pitiful condition, Mr. Queen. Have you considered consulting a palmist?”

His phone clicked gently in the old man’s ear.

There was nothing in the next day’s newspapers about a robbery attempt on Park Avenue.

The Inspector called another conference.

“Humffrey’s right,” he said grimly. “I’m calling you all off.”

“What?” Jessie cried.

“The tail, too?” Wes Polonsky said.

“The tail, too, Wes.”

The five old men stared at the sixth incredulously.

“We’ll get nowhere attacking Humffrey’s strength,” he went on without excitement. “All we’ve done is waste time, money, and shoe leather. He’s covered his tracks from way back where Finner and Coy were concerned, and he has nothing to do now but sit tight. What we’ve got to do is attack his weakness.”

“Does he have one?” Jessie asked bitterly.

“Yes. It’s mixed up with what happened on the night of August 4th on Nair Island. It doesn’t matter which murder we pin on Humffrey, remember. He can only take the long sleep once.”

“Sarah Humffrey? You keep coming back to her, Richard.”

He nodded. “I should have stuck to her from the beginning. I’m convinced Mrs. Humffrey knows something about the baby’s murder that Humffrey is dead scared she’ll spill.” He looked down at Jessie. “We’ve got to worm that information out of her. And that means an inside job.”

“In other words,” Jessie said, “me.”

He took her hand clumsily. “I wouldn’t ask you to do it if I could see a better way, Jessie. Do you think you could get into the Duane Sanitarium as a nurse?”

5 And Then... Justice

“Where is this woman?” Richard Queen snarled. “She’s half an hour late now.”

“She’ll be here,” Jessie said soothingly. “My, you don’t sound like an engaged man at all. More like a husband.”

He colored. “How about another cocktail?”

“I’d love another cocktail.”

He signaled the waitress hastily.

Jessie felt warm inside. It was not entirely the Pink Lady. Pretending to be engaged for Elizabeth Currie’s benefit had been his idea. He had insisted on coming along, and they had to have a reason for his presence.

“Dr. Duane saw you that night on Nair Island, when he came to take Mrs. Humffrey to the sanitarium,” he had said stubbornly. “I’d rather sit in on this.”

“But he hardly glanced at me,” Jessie had said. “Doctors never look at a nurse’s face unless she’s young and pretty.”

“Then he took a good look!”

Not that Dr. Duane was going to be present. It was an exploratory lunch in a Stamford restaurant with Jessie’s friend Elizabeth Currie, who had been on the nursing staff of the Duane Sanitarium for years. Approaching the problem of getting inside the sanitarium — and eventually inside Sarah Humffrey’s room — through Elizabeth Currie had been Jessie’s idea. Still, Richard had insisted. (“I want to feel this out, Jessie. I may still change my mind. After all, once you got in there you’d be cut off from me...”)

Elizabeth Currie turned out to be a tall Scotswoman with iron hair, steel jaws, and bone eyes.

“So this is the man, Jessie. Let me look at you... Well! He’s a little older looking than I expected, but then... I think it’s marvelous, two people of your age finding each other after all hope had fled, haha! However did you do it, Jessie?”

“It was love at first sight,” Jessie said lightly. “Wasn’t it... darling?”

“Smack between the eyes,” Richard Queen mumbled. “Cocktail, Miss Currie?”

“I’ll say! Double Manhattan.”

“Double Manhattan,” he said to the waitress. “Maybe we’d better order the food now...”

An hour later he nudged Jessie under cover of the tablecloth, desperately.

“Well, no, Elizabeth,” Jessie said, nudging him back. “As a matter of fact, our plans are a little vague. Richard’s firm is sending him abroad for a few months, and we probably won’t be... married till he gets back.”