The Fourth Side of the Triangle

The waiting was a stasis, the blood piling up in the vessel to the bursting point, the question being would there be resolution and relief before the complete blockage and eruption. Reporters spotted Lutetia McKell and crowded round her, to her distress, until Richard M. Heaton rescued her; none of them dared leave the courtroom while the jury deliberated; they sat and talked, or were mute, thinking their own thoughts. Heaton tended to be optimistic, O’Brien noncommittal (“I never speculate on what a jury will or will not do”), except to point out that District Attorney De Angelus had not left the room, indicating the prosecution’s belief that the jury would not be out long — for whatever that was worth; De Angelus himself was the recipient of a message, delivered to him by messenger, to which he dashed off an immediate reply, and sank back only to be aroused by another messenger with another envelope.

“He’s kept so very busy, isn’t he?” said Lutetia. Then she began nibbling at her handkerchief.

So Dane and Judy captured her attention by telling the story of their original unsuccessful search for the bar and bartender, and of their visit to Ellery Queen.

“That’s his father, Inspector Queen, who just came in and spoke to the D.A.,” Robert O’Brien pointed out.

And of the lightning development of the hunt thereafter.

Lutetia was touched. “Margaret is so faithful,” she said. “You know, Dane, how she worships your father. I suppose all along she’s known a great deal more than any of us, from this and that picked up at random. She must have realized something was wrong when she found that outlandish tan suit in Ashton’s bedroom. She always empties the pockets of his suits, you know.”

For want of something better to do, they discussed old Margaret’s incredible enterprise in the matter of the baggage claim check and the black bag. They agreed that she must have found the claim check in the tan suit shortly after the first visit of the police; to old Maggie, Irish-born, to whom “police” and “rebel-hunters” would forever be synonymous, at the same time loyal unto death to Ashton McKell, the sight of the claim check must have triggered her instinct for trouble, and she had simply secreted it to keep it out of the hands of the law. After Ashton’s arrest she had sneaked down to Grand Central, found all her fears confirmed when, in return for the check, she was handed the little black bag, and promptly enlisted her sister as a confederate, hiding the bag in her sister’s flat for no other reason than to keep it from being found by the authorities, who were searching everything pertaining to McKell.

“Hers not to reason why,” said Dane. “Good old Maggie.”

“Something’s about to break,” said O’Brien alertly. “Look at what’s going on at the D.A.’s table... I was right. There goes the bailiff into the judge’s chambers. The jury’s probably reached a verdict.”

They had.

Not guilty.

There was a frantic moment when everyone was in motion — hands clasping, lips babbling, backs being slapped, Ashton embracing Lutetia (in public!), Dane embracing Judy (both electrically surprised at the naturalness with which they turned and fell into each other’s arms) — then everything suddenly stopped, hands, eyes, mouths, everything. For an instant it was hard to say why, because really nothing had happened except the approach of a very large man grasping a folded piece of paper. But then it came through: there was something in his very approach, a balls-of-the-feet guardedness, the way his great fingers grasped the paper, the hard look on his hard face, that was like a gush of ice water.

It was Sergeant Velie.

Who said politely, “Mr. McKell.”

Ashton still had his arm about Lutetia. “Yes?”

“If you don’t mind, sir,” Sergeant Velie said, “I have to speak to Mrs. McKell.”

“To my wife?”

It seemed to Dane that his mother started and then took a perceptible grip on herself.

But her glance at the big sergeant was coldly courteous. “Yes? What is it, please?”

“I’m going to have to ask you,” said the detective, “to come down to police headquarters with me.”

Lutetia stirred, ever so slightly. Her husband blinked. Dane moved forward angrily: “What’s this all about, Sergeant? Why do you want to take my mother — of all people! — down to headquarters?”

“Because I have to book her,” the sergeant said impassively, “on a charge of suspicion of the murder of Sheila Grey.”

III The Third Side Lutetia

There was confusion. Dane kept running around looking for the lawyers, who had left the courtroom. Ashton interposed his formidable body between his wife and the sergeant as if he expected an assault. Judy looked about wildly for Dane. Reporters, catching the drama, were beginning to converge on the group with everything flapping. The sergeant said, “I have to ask you to step out of the way, Mr. McKell. This’ll turn into a mob scene if you don’t let me get her out of here quick.”

Detective Mack had materialized; he was reaching around Ashton to get at Lutetia.