The Fourth Side of the Triangle

“Lady Norma,” Ellery went on swiftly, with no sign of weariness now, “and I point out to you that ‘Norma’ is an anagram of the name of the fifth person who was in a position to know of the Sheila-Ashton rendezvous — the fifth person who, the other four having been eliminated, must have been the blackmailer — and Sheila’s killer. For who else could have known that Ashton McKell visited Sheila Grey? His chauffeur, who dropped him off at the club Wednesday after Wednesday and picked him up again late every Wednesday night, and who was uniquely situated to suspect the nature of those Wednesday excursions — and to verify them. His chauffeur, who somehow became Dane’s predecessor in Sheila’s affections and then murdered her for throwing him over — Dad, watch Ramon!”

Ramon had backed toward the foyer. His skin had turned a putty color; his nostrils were pinched white with surprise, anger, and fear; the line-up of his teeth glittered in his swarthy face. And as Inspector Queen, Dane, and Ashton McKell closed in on him, Ramon seized a heavy chair, flung it at them, and was gone through the apartment door.

The Inspector half caught the chair; part of it banged against Ashton McKell’s legs and tripped him; and Dane tripped over his father. For a moment the three men were an impossible tangle of arms and legs. Then, shouting, the McKells regained their feet and plunged toward the foyer. But Inspector Queen roared, “No! He may be armed! Let him go!” And as they stopped, panting, he said, “He can’t get away. I have detectives posted at every exit of the building. He’ll run straight into their arms.”

Later, over restorative brandy — although Ashton McKell was still too shocked by the revelation to regain his natural florid color — Ellery said, “Yes, Ramon, whose name inspired Sheila Grey to label her new collection Norma, was her last lover.” Out of pity he did not glance at the elder McKell. “It was Ramon whom she dropped when she became interested in you, Dane, and his Spanish pride brought on a homicidal rage.” He forbore to go into the question of Sheila’s taste in men, knowing that part of Ashton’s shock resulted from the fact that his own chauffeur had been sleeping with the woman of his dreams; her lovers had been a heterogeneous lot, and he supposed that the Spaniard — Ramon was handsome in a Mediterranean way — had struck her fancy.

“It was Ramon who came to Sheila’s apartment that night, sneaked into the bedroom to get the revolver he knew was in the night-table drawer — forgive me again, but he had had plenty of opportunity to become acquainted with that bedroom — and, entering Sheila’s workroom, shot her dead as she sat telephoning the police. It was Ramon, of course, who replaced the phone on the cradle, found Sheila’s letter to the police, pocketed it, and escaped.

“He took the letter to use for blackmailing Dane; or, if that failed, as it did, to draw suspicion away from himself by pointing it toward Dane... as it also did.

“He almost got away with it.”

There was very little conversation until someone rapped at the door and Inspector Queen opened it to find Sergeant Velie there, grinning massively.

“You got him, I take it,” the Inspector said.

“We got him, Inspector. He’s quiet now, being a real good boy. You coming downstairs with us?”

“As soon as I get my coat and hat.”

When the door closed on them, as if on signal a babble of exclamations broke out.

“It’s over, it’s over.”

“How can we ever thank you, Mr. Queen?”

“By God, he did it. Mr. Queen — Ellery—”

“This calls for another toast!”

“What a New Year’s gift,” cried Ashton McKell. “Are there the fixings for another toast?”

Three more bottles of champagne were found in the kitchen. Glasses chimed joyously. After a while, Ashton was singing a song of his college youth. (“Oh, we’ll sing of Lydia Pinkham/ And her love for the human race,/ How she makes her Vegetable Compound,/ And the papers publish her face.”) And Lutetia hiccupped ever so slightly and burst into slightly raffish laughter; and Judy danced a jig to the humming by the assembled company of “The Irish Washerwoman.”

And when Ellery said, “I don’t mind telling you that my self-esteem has been restored,” it was Lutetia McKell who cried, “To the armchair detective and his restored self-esteem!” and they drank the toast in the last of the champagne, while Ellery smiled and smiled.

The fact that “the chauffeur done it,” as the man on the street put it, seemed to take the zing out of the Sheila Grey murder case. It was as if the case-hardened mystery buff, reading a new work of fiction, were to follow the red herring through 250 pages and find, on page 251, that the criminal was the butler. Other news began to crowd the Grey case into corners of the front pages, and soon it was being reported on page 6, and beyond.

The McKells dropped out of the news entirely.