The Fourth Side of the Triangle

“You know, we’re a couple of goops,” Judy said. “I don’t see that we’re accomplishing anything moping and comparing moods. Why don’t we have another look at Sheila Grey’s apartment? Maybe we overlooked something.”

“For two reasons: One, we have no right to enter the premises; two, the police have been over it half a dozen times, and we’re not very likely to find something they missed.” They were seated stiffly in the drawing room of the McKell apartment. Ashton and Lutetia had gone to an afternoon church service. “Anyway, nobody overlooked anything.”

“Why can’t we try? What harm will it do?”

“I told you. We have no right to enter the premises!”

“Dane McKell, don’t you raise your voice to me. I’m only trying to help.”

“Then suggest something helpful!”

Judy blew up. “Why are you treating me so brutally?”

“I’m not treating you any way at all!”

“There could be something in that. Look, buster, I know what’s eating you. You can’t forgive yourself because one night, for a few seconds, you allowed yourself to forget that little Miss Secretary, your father’s hired hand, came from the wrong side of the elevated tracks!”

“Oh, come on, Judy,” Dane said wearily.

“Also, I have the misfortune to be Irish. And not lace-curtain Irish, either!”

“I wouldn’t care if you were a Hottentot.”

“You’d treat me just as badly, is that it?”

“Now you’re talking like a female. It’s nothing you are, Judy. The trouble is me.”

“Don’t give me that baloney,” Judy said tautly. “We worked together so well for a while, until I forgot my place. You haven’t spoken a decent word to me since.”

“Judy, try to understand.” A certain faltering, the way his features twisted, silenced Judy. “It’s something about me. Personally. I can’t explain it. I mean, I may never be able to. Even to you. Especially to you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look, maybe John Leslie can be wheedled into letting us into the penthouse after all. Let’s give your suggestion a workout.”

It was merely a way of terminating their conversation. Leslie, who with the passage of time seemed to have a deepening respect for the law, could not be wheedled, even by Dane; they argued with him half-heartedly, and with each other snappishly; and finally Judy left Dane in a huff, refusing his offer to see her home.

The next day, Monday, when the trial began, Dane and Judy Walsh were seated on opposite sides of the courtroom aisle.

The trial of Lutetia McKell was not quite a duplicate of her husband’s. For one thing, the selection of a jury took almost no time at all. For another, the proceedings developed in an altogether different atmosphere, a here-we-go-again climate that produced more curiosity than heat. The feeling was generated that the district attorney was about to make an ass of himself. As one newspaper put it, “If at first you don’t succeed, prosecute the wife.” It was not fair to De Angelus, but newspaperdom is rarely concerned with fairness.

Henry Barton seized the opportunity. Ridicule became his not-so-secret weapon in cross-examination of prosecution witnesses, and what he could not attack with ridicule he undermined by innuendo. For example, when Detective Mack was on the stand to recount his and Sergeant Velie’s various visits to the McKell apartment, the attorney for the defense said, “Now, Detective Mack, you’ve been assigned to this precinct for — how long is it?”

“Two years.”

“Let’s take the past six months. Have you had occasion to visit other apartments in other apartment buildings in the neighborhood of the McKell building in the past six months?”

“Yes, sir.”

“On official business?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In your capacity as a police detective?”

“Yes, sir.”

“To investigate cases of forcible entry, armed robbery, burglary, and so forth?”

“Yes, sir.”

“One case only last August in the very next building to the McKells’?”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“In that case a housemaid was tied up and the lady of the house assaulted and robbed?”

The district attorney objected strenuously on the usual ground of improper cross, and a pretty by-play developed among the lawyers and the judge, the result of which was that the questions and answers along this line were ordered stricken; but the impression was implanted in the jury’s mind that the neighborhood of the McKell apartment building was a regular prey of prowlers, which was what Barton was trying to establish.

On the morning of the third day of the trial, Ellery was glumly studying a color photograph of a gaunt model in an evening gown from Sheila Grey’s Lady Dulcea collection when he was rather violently visited by the McKells, father and son.

He sat up alertly, shifting his casts to a less uncomfortable position. “Something up?”

“Last week when you were questioning my wife,” Ashton McKell said, eyes glittering, “do you remember your saying that the television set was her only contact with the outside world?”

“Yes?”

“Look at this!”

“It came,” Dane said, “in this morning’s mail.”