Inspector Queen’s Own Case

“What were you doing here, Jessie? When I looked through that basement window and saw you standing down there facing Humffrey’s gun, I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

“I tried to phone you before I came, but I couldn’t get an answer. I couldn’t even locate Chief or Mrs. Pearl.” Jessie told him what she had found out from Sadie Smith, and how on impulse she had decided to investigate the chute when she was unable to reach him or the Taugus chief of police. “What I don’t understand, Richard, is what you were doing here. I thought you were in town chasing Henry Cullum.”

“I started to, but I ran into Johnny Kripps and Wes Polonsky.” He grinned. “They were watching Humffrey’s Park Avenue apartment on their own. That was luck, because Wes had his car. We sat around waiting for Cullum to show, so we could pump him about Mrs. Humffrey’s whereabouts, when we saw Humffrey trying to take a sneak. He was alone, and he was acting so queer we decided to tail him. He dodged around to his garage, got his car out, and headed for the West Side Highway. We tailed him all the way to Nair Island, and that was that.”

Jessie laid her head on his shoulder. “It’s all over, Richard.”

“No, it isn’t.”

His shoulder was rigid. Jessie sat up quickly.

“It isn’t?” she said. “It isn’t what, Richard?”

“Isn’t over.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes. “I don’t know how much more you can take tonight, Jessie. Can you stand a big shock?”

“Shock.” Dear God, what is it now? Jessie thought. “What’s happened!”

“We sure picked a lulu when we stuck our noses into this one. I don’t know that I’ve ever run across a case like it.”

“Like what?”

He got up and took her by the hand.

“I’ll show you, Jessie.”

Chief Pearl’s two detectives, Borcher and Tinny, were in the study. Borcher was reading a copy of Plato’s Republic with a deep frown. Tinny was napping in a leather armchair.

Both jumped up when Richard Queen opened the door. When he waved, Borcher returned to his puzzled reading and Tinny sank down and closed his eyes again.

“Over here, Jessie.”

The dirty pillowslip was spread out on Humffrey’s desk. Everything else had been removed.

“I was the one who found it,” Jessie said. “I fished it out of the nursery chute. Then he — he came in and took it away from me.”

“Then you’ve seen it.”

“Just a glance.”

“Examine it, Jessie.”

Jessie bent over the pillowslip. Now that she saw it in strong light, at leisure, it was remarkable how well she had remembered the position of the handprint in supervising the forgery.

She shook her head. “I can’t see anything special about this, Richard. Is there something on the back? I never did see the back.”

“As a matter of fact, there is.” He took hold of the tip of the lace edging at the upper right corner of the slip and turned it back a little. Just below the reverse of the lace Jessie saw a small stain, rusty brown in color. “That’s a bloodstain, probably from a scratched finger. However, remember that Humffrey didn’t get a look at the back of our forgery. We had it face up on Abe’s desk under glass.” He flipped the corner back. “You still don’t see where we went wrong?”

Jessie stared and stared. “No.”

“Take another look at that handprint, Jessie. A real look this time.”

And then she saw it, and her mind leaped back to that August night in the nursery and her brief glimpse of the pillow over the baby’s face. And for the first time since that moment Jessie Sherwood saw the pillow as she had seen it then.

What she had forgotten until now was that the little finger of the handprint was a whole finger.

There was no missing fingertip.

“That’s how Humffrey knew the slip we showed him was a fake,” Inspector Queen shrugged. “We showed him a handprint with the tip of the pinkie gone. He knew that the original pillowcase had a handprint showing five full fingers.”

“But I don’t understand,” Jessie cried. “Alton Humffrey’s pinkie does have the tip missing. How could his right hand possibly have made this print?”

“It couldn’t.”

“But—”

“It couldn’t. Therefore it didn’t.”

Jessie gaped at him. The silence became so intense that Borcher looked up from his Plato uneasily and Tinny opened one eye.

“But Richard...”

“Humffrey didn’t murder the baby, Jessie. I guess they knew what they were doing when they retired me.” The old man sighed. “I was so sure Humffrey knocked off Finner and the Coy girl that I had to wrap it up in one neat package. One killer. But it wasn’t one killer, Jessie. Humffrey murdered Finner and Connie Coy, all right, but someone else murdered the baby.”

Jessie squeezed her forehead with both hands, trying to force some order into her thoughts.