The Fourth Side of the Triangle

They followed, they nodded, they agreed. But without spirit. They all felt fagged. Judy Walsh’s eyes were a chronic swollen red; crying had become part of her life, like brushing her teeth. She sat clinging to Dane’s arm as if she were pulling him back from the edge of a cliff.

“The beginning, the source of everything, is Sheila herself. ‘In my end is my beginning,’ as Mary Queen of Scots said.” (Tactfully, Ellery did not mention the circumstances under which she had said it.) “Where did Sheila begin? Her business, for example. Didn’t one of you, when we were first looking at her fashion designs, mention that she’d started her designing career in partnership?”

“With a man named Winterson.” Ashton McKell nodded. “Elisha Winterson. I recall Sheila’s saying he was still in New York.”

“Good. Then we start with him. See if you can’t get him to visit me here this afternoon.”

“I’ll have him here at the point of a gun, if necessary.”

Such measures were not required. Elisha Winterson was highly flattered to have Ashton McKell himself come calling for him at Countess Roni’s, the Fifth Avenue fashion salon with which he was associated.

The countess seemed flattered, too. “Such a dreadful business!” she exclaimed in her strongly Italian accent; she had been in the United States for over twenty years, and it had been a struggle to retain the sound of Rome, but she had been victorious. “Poor Sheila. And this persecution of your family, Mr. McKell. Lish, you must help. Don’t waste a moment!”

As Ramon drove them to the hospital, Elisha Winterson talked and talked. He was a small dapper man with a bald head, the top of which was caved in, so that from above, as Countess Roni (who was six feet tall) had once remarked, his head looked like one of the craters of the moon.

“Roni is very sweet and simpatico,” Winterson chattered. “You know, she’s not Italian at all, although she lived in Italy for a long time. That’s where she met poor old Sigi. I saw his patent of nobility myself, yards and yards of moldy old parchment dripping with seals, Holy Roman Empire, defunct, 1806, but as I say, who cares? I most certainly don’t. As for Sheila—”

Ashton McKell said, “Mr. Winterson, would you mind not going into that until Queen can question you?”

Winterson’s sunken-domed head shot around. “Queen? What queen is that?”

“Ellery Queen.”

“The author? He’s helping you? Well, of course, Mr. McKell, just as you say.” He seemed torn between awe and a private joke. “I’ll stay bottled up till he uncorks me.”

In the hospital room Elisha Winterson babbled away, lit Turkish cigarets, bombarded Ellery with praise, and then presented himself for uncorking. “I understand you want to ask me about Sheila Grey, Mr. Queen. Fire when ready.”

“Tell me all about your association with her. How, when, where you met her, how you came to go into partnership, and so on.”

“I met her in 1956,” Winterson said. “It was at one of those little parties that Roni — that’s Countess Roni, the designer I’m working with now — is famous for. I was, if I may say so, rather widely known. But Sheila was already well on her way to being an international figure in high fashion. So I was flattered when she suggested we go into business together. I mean—”

“This was in 1956?”

“Early in 1957. I mean, Sheila could have had almost anyone in the profession as her partner. That girl had flair, impeccable taste. And a sense of timing, which is very important. She did all her own sketching, too. It was a great break for me. Not only career-wise, by the way. She was the most fascinating woman I’d ever met. I was in love with her even before we established The House of Grey.”

He would be utterly candid with them, Winterson said (glancing at Judy): he was very much the ladies’ man, he said with a laugh. “You wouldn’t think it, looking at me.” But discriminating; he was no old lecher. He wanted Sheila and he pursued her “in my own fashion” (contriving to leave the impression that his “fashion” was immensely subtle, a sort of secret process which he had no intention of giving away). At first their relationship was all work and no play. He had almost given up hope that it would ever be anything else when, one night, without preliminary, she took him as her lover.

“That’s the way it was with Sheila,” Winterson said with a wistful half-smile. “Nothing but camaraderie for months, then — bango! if you’ll forgive the expression, Miss Walsh. No one ever sold Sheila Grey a bill of goods unless she was absolutely ready to buy. She was one of the world’s shrewdest shoppers where men were concerned. And then she kept it a one-man-at-a-time affair.” Dane found his fists curling with hatred of this smug little dressed-up troglodyte.

The House of Grey had its first official showing that year, 1957. It created a sensation abroad as well as in the United States. “Lady Sheila — that was her name for our first collection — put us right up there on top.”

“I mean to ask you about that—” Ellery began.