The Fourth Side of the Triangle

For all the ease with which Dane had accepted her in his arms at the climax of his father’s trial, Judy found their relations becoming more distant. She could not read his mind, but there was no mistaking the coldness of his manner. That moment in the courtroom began to appear an unguarded outpost in time, along with their previous embrace in her apartment. Could his mother’s predicament account for his increasing withdrawal? Judy wondered painfully. That could not be the only reason, even if it was a reason. Something else was bothering him. But what?

Judy phoned him one night after a strained dinner at the McKells’. Dane had driven her home in almost total silence and left her abruptly.

“Dane, this is Judy.”

“Judy?”

She waited. He waited. “Dane, I must know. What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?”

“Something is. You seem so...”

He laughed. “My father’s been tried for murder, my mother is under arrest on the same charge — what could be wrong?”

While Judy angrily blinked back the tears, she heard the connection broken. So she stumbled to bed.

She did not phone him again, and when finally he phoned her she assumed a coldness to match his.

“Yes, Dane.”

“I’m just transmitting a message,” he said dully. “Dad and I talked to Ellery Queen a while ago, and he wants us to visit him tomorrow. Dad wants you along. Will you come?”

“Of course.”

She waited, but he said nothing more, and after a moment she hung up. His voice had never sounded so lifeless. The crazy thought struck her that they were all dead — Dane, his parents, Ellery Queen, herself — and that the only living entity in the universe was Sheila Grey. It made her hate Sheila Grey... That was when Judy gave way to her tears.

“Do you own shares in this hospital,” Dane asked, “or are they holding you prisoner?”

Ellery was in the same room at the Swedish-Norwegian Hospital; he was in the same chair, his hockey goalie’s legs propped up. The casts looked new.

“The legs weren’t knitting properly. They’ve had to monkey around with them.” Ellery seemed tired, restless. “It’s a good thing I have no serious psychological problems, or I’m sure I’d be thinking of myself as Toulouse-Lautrec.”

“You poor man.” Lutetia stooped and kissed him on the brow.

“Thank you, Mrs. McKell,” Ellery said. “That hasn’t been done to me for a very long time.”

Dane was wondering what direction her behavior would take next when she said, “Well, I felt I hadn’t thanked you properly for what you did for my husband.”

There was a silence. Then Ellery said, “We’ll have to do the same for you, won’t we? How do matters stand, Mr. McKell?”

There was little to report and, of that little, little that was new. Barton was still talking cheerfully.

“I don’t doubt an acquittal,” Ashton McKell said, convincing no one, perhaps, but his wife. “However, I’d like something better, Mr. Queen, than the equivalent of the Scotch verdict of Not Proven. I don’t want any loose ends.”

“In this business, Mr. McKell,” Ellery said dryly — perhaps he was piqued by a certain commanding-officer quality in the McKell voice — “we generally take what we can get.”

He began to talk to Lutetia of inconsequential things — the deadly sameness of hospital life, her taste in flowers (did she like the ones in the vase? would she take one and pin it on her dress?) — nothing, at first, to remind her that today was Friday, and that in three days she would be going on trial for murder.

Gently and step by step (did he suspect? Dane thought) the invalid led Lutetia to describe once more the events of September 14th.

“So after the servants left for the night, you were completely alone, Mrs. McKell?”

“Completely.”

“You didn’t leave the apartment, even for a few minutes? For a stroll? Some air?”

No, she had not left the apartment for so much as thirty seconds. Of that she was positive. She had not even gone to the door, because no one had rung or knocked.

“How about the telephone? Did you speak to anyone on the phone?”

She hesitated. “Oh, dear.”

“Then you did?”

“I think I did.”

“To whom?”

“I can’t remember. Some man, I think it was.”

“About what?”

She smiled uncertainly. “I feel an utter fool. I just don’t recall. The only reason I remember a call at all is that I was half expecting my husband to phone from Washington.”

“This man called you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure of that.”

“I think I’m sure. I’d probably remember if I made a call to anyone.”

Dane could have shaken her. “Mother, for heaven’s sake, think. This could be all-important. Who phoned you?”

“Dane, don’t look at me that way. If I remembered, don’t you think I’d say? I wasn’t paying much attention to anything that evening. You know television. You just sit there in a vacuum...”

Yes, Dane thought, where you live most of the time.

“...and then so much has happened since, it’s quite driven the details of that evening out of my head.”

“Mrs. McKell, Dane is right,” Ellery said. “This could be of the utmost importance. You simply must try to recollect who called you. Was it during the early part of the evening, or late?”

“I don’t know.”