The Fourth Side of the Triangle

“I count five. Sheila herself, number one. And would Sheila attempt to blackmail Ashton McKell? Hardly. She admired and respected him.” Ashton gripped the back of his wife’s chair still harder. “She was willing to foster a communion of spirit, a Platonic friendship, under difficult and sometimes ludicrous circumstances, because of that admiration and respect, quite aside from the misinterpretation society would have placed on the relationship had it become generally known. Sheila certainly did not need money; and had she needed money she would not have had to resort to blackmail — all she had to do was ask for it, and it would have been given to her in full measure, to overflowing — am I right, Mr. McKell?”

“Of course,” Ashton said stiffly.

“No, Sheila did not blackmail Ashton McKell. Who else knew of their liaison? Naturally, Ashton. Surely he didn’t blackmail himself. Why should he conceivably have done so? It makes no sense. So we eliminate Mr. McKell.

“Who else? You, Mrs. McKell. And subsequently you, Dane. But you are both rich in your own right; even in theory, you would not have to resort to blackmail if you needed money. True, each of you was hurt and resentful of Ashton’s conduct, but blackmail is hardly the answer to hurt and resentment. If you wished to punish husband and father for what you conceived to be misconduct, each of you would have chosen a far different course — as in fact each of you did. Blackmail figured in neither.

“So there we are,” Ellery said. “Five people knew or could have known about Sheila Grey and Ashton McKell, of whom we have thrown out four as possible blackmailers. The conclusion is inescapable that the fifth person was the blackmailer and, therefore, Sheila Grey’s murderer.”

“I don’t understand,” Dane mumbled. “Five? I can’t think of a fifth.”

“We’ll get to that later, Dane. Meanwhile, what else do we know about the identity of this Janus — this individual with two faces, one of blackmail, the other of murder? Curiously, we know a great deal, but to get to it we must dig a rather deep hole.

“Follow me.

“We begin with the gold mine of information deeded to us by Winterson, Sheila’s original partner in The House of Grey.

“What did Winterson tell us?

“That Sheila had a succession of lovers, beginning with himself. (If there were earlier ones, as I suppose there were, they are irrelevant to the issue.)

“What else did Winterson say? That Sheila was not her original name. She was born ‘Lillian.’ When did she change Lillian to Sheila? After the great success of her first important showing, the collection she named Lady Sheila. Why Lady Sheila? Why Sheila at all — which wasn’t her name at the time, yet which so captivated her that she subsequently took it as her legal name?

“I kept puzzling over this. But the answer came to me in one flash. What’s Winterson’s given name?”

“Elisha,” said Judy, wonderingly.

“Elisha.” Ellery waited. No one said anything. “Doesn’t any of you see the relationship between ‘Elisha’ and ‘Sheila’?”

Judy cried, “They’re anagrams!”

“Yes. ‘Sheila’ is a rearrangement of the letters of ‘Elisha.’

“When I saw that, of course,” Ellery said, “I also saw that it could have been coincidence. So I went on to her next year’s collection, the 1958 one. That one she named Lady Nella. What else was significant in Sheila Grey’s life during the year 1958? Well, she had dropped Elisha Winterson both as partner and lover by that time. Did she take a new partner? No. A new lover? Winterson said yes, and named him. Remember his name?”

“Foster, wasn’t it?” Dane said.

“His full name.”

There was another silence. Then Judy said, “I remember. Something about Edgar Allan Poe... Yes! You asked Mr. Winterson how to spell Foster’s first name, which was Allen.”

“Allen — with an e — Bainbridge Foster,” Ellery nodded. “Allen — an anagram of Nella, the name of her 1958 collection!

“Another coincidence? Let’s see.”

Winterson had mentioned three other men’s names, Ellery pointed out, in identifying Sheila’s lovers during the following four years. In 1959 it had been John F. “Jack” Hurt III, speed demon of the raceways. In 1960 it had been the high-society polo player, Ronald Van Vester. Winterson had been abroad during 1961 and was able to suggest no lover’s name for that year, but for 1962 he had put the finger on Eddwin Odonnell, the Shakespearean actor.

“John F. Hurt III, 1959,” Ellery said. “And the name of Sheila’s collection in 1959? Lady Ruth. Hurt — Rath — anagrams.

“Ronald Van Vester, 1960. And the name of the 1960 collection — Lady Lorna D. ‘D’ for ‘Doone’? Not a bit of it. ‘Ronald’ and ‘Lorna D.’ are anagrams.