The Fourth Side of the Triangle

“The pattern is fixed,” said Ellery. “Four years, four anagrams of contemporaneous lovers... I must admit that the absence of 1961, the Lady Dulcea year, piqued me, and still does. Because Dulcea — a very strange name indeed, so strange it sounds forced — when you unscramble it trying to make a man’s name out of it, peculiarly enough yields the name ‘Claude.’ Of course, we don’t know if there was such a man, or if Sheila was simply taking a sabbatical that year—”

“Wait,” Ashton McKell said. “Claude... Yes, Sheila spoke a great deal about some Frenchman, a playwright, who came to New York in — when was it? — 1961, I think — yes, 1961 — to have a play of his produced on Broadway. The way she spoke of him — now that I realize—”

“Claude Claudel,” Dane said slowly. “Damn it all, don’t tell me he too—”

“1961. Claude. Dulcea.” Ellery nodded. “It’s too perfectly fitted into the pattern to be coincidental. I think we have a right to assume that Monsieur Claudel was Number One on Miss Grey’s 1961 hit parade, for part of the year, anyway.”

“But what about 1962?” Inspector Queen could not help asking. He was as fascinated as the others by the anagrammatical pattern.

“Well, according to Winterson, in 1962 the favored man was the actor, Odonnell, whose given name, by which no one ever calls him except on theater programs, is ‘Edd’ — two ds — ‘win.’ Odonnell is always called ‘Hamlet’ Odonnell, from his tiresome playing of the Shakespearean role. And what was Sheila’s 1962 collection named? Lady Thelma. ‘Hamlet’ — ‘Thelma.’ Anagrams.

“Every lover of Sheila’s anagrammatically inspired the name of The House of Grey’s collection current during his interregnum. Apparently she preferred to use his Christian name as the basis of the anagram, but she would use the surname if she had to.”

And the room was a pocket of silence again in the celebrating world, with the wind outside adding to the noisy merriment. A clock, which had been ticking all along, sounded as if it had just begun. Someone’s chair creaked, and someone else breathed a snorty breath. In this emphasized silence a strained voice, Lutetia’s, said, “Mr. Queen, do go on. Please.”

“In a way,” Ellery said, “this completes the record. The last complete showing of The House of Grey was the ‘Hamlet’ Odonnell — Lady Thelma year. But at the time of her death Sheila was working on her new collection. She had drawn roughs and made sketches, and had actually completed at least one design.

“Since collections and lovers go together in Sheila’s case, who was her last — her most recent — lover? What man was intimate with her during the past year? Forgive me for becoming personal again, Mr. McKell, but that wasn’t you. You fell into a special category in Sheila’s life; besides, your name doesn’t anagrammatize.” Ashton McKell’s face was still set in plaster of Paris. “Was it you, Dane? Yes, but only in the most limited of senses, as far as I can gather. You and Sheila had really not had time to establish a meaningful relationship. You may have been on your way to it; but, in any case, whom were you following? Whose place would you have filled? Because there is someone — someone you don’t suspect.”

Ellery sounded as weary as his audience looked startled.

He reminded them, from Winterson’s account and from what Sheila herself had told Dane, that she dropped her lovers as suddenly as she took them. If at the time of Dane’s appearance in her life she had already dropped her most recent lover — assuming such an unknown existed — or if he had somehow learned that he was about to be dropped by this unpredictable one-man-at-a-time woman, as she had called herself, then a perfect motive for murder could be expected. Hell might have no fury like a woman scorned, Ellery pointed out, but as a matter of statistical fact more murders of frustrated passion and love-revenge were committed in the United States by men than by women.

“We have one feasible way,” he said, “to check the theory that another lover existed in Sheila’s life — the lover Dane was in the process of displacing. Had she named the new collection she was working on at the time of her death?” Ellery started to rise, but he sank back in the chair with a grimace. “These damned legs of mine,” he said. “Ramon, would you mind? The tubular package on the mantelpiece.”

The chauffeur brought it to him, and Ellery unwrapped it, disclosing a roll of heavy paper. He unrolled it, glanced over it, nodded, and held it up for all to see.

It was the beautifully finished fashion drawing of a model in a sports outfit. The clothes were sketched in exquisite detail.

“This is the only design Sheila Grey had time to finish,” Ellery said. “And it tells us the name Sheila had selected for the collection. Here it is at the bottom: Lady Norma, in block lettering.