The Fourth Side of the Triangle

It was a wonderful relief. Ashton threw himself back into his business with something very like fury. He had neglected his affairs for a long time, and he was not a man to be satisfied with the work of subordinates. The cocoa bean crop in Ghana, the sugar shipments from Peru, the problem of substitutes for Havana tobacco, the efforts of half a dozen new nations to create merchant marines — he dealt with such matters like a juggler confident of his prowess. Judy was lunching with him at the office these days because of the heavy work-load he piled on her.

Lutetia was happily back at her charity sewing, even (for the first time in two decades) engaging a seamstress to help her with the backlog of illegitimate layettes.

Dane set out to finish his novel, secretly doubting that it would ever be accomplished. It held too many associations for him of the summer. Summer of probing Sheila, dating Sheila, wooing Sheila, loving Sheila... summer of Sheila; he knew it would never be anything else in his mind. Except that it was also the summer of having lost Sheila forever.

Half-heartedly he toyed with the idea of abandoning the novel-in-progress and starting another, but he put it off, promising himself that he would embark on a profitable schedule as soon as the indictment against him was formally dropped. The only word he had had since Ramon’s arrest was that his lawyers had procured an indefinite postponement of his trial, pending the quashing of the indictment. But as the days passed and he heard nothing, he grew irritated.

He phoned police headquarters.

At first Inspector Queen, who sounded peculiar, suggested that he get in touch with the district attorney’s office. Then suddenly he said, “Maybe it’s just as well. Wait, Mr. McKell. As long as you’ve phoned me—”

“Yes?”

“Some questions have come up. Maybe I’d better discuss them with you. I was intending to call you later, but I guess this is as good a time as any.”

“What questions?”

“I’ll tell you what,” the Inspector said. “I’d like my son to be present. Suppose we make it my apartment at two o’clock, all right?”

Dane showed up with his parents and Judy in tow. “I don’t know what this is all about,” he said to the Queens, “but I told my father about it, and he seemed to feel that all of us ought to be present.”

“I don’t know what it’s about, either,” Ellery said, regarding the Inspector with narrowed eyes. “So, Dad, how about laying it on the line?”

Inspector Queen said, “We’ve been questioning this Ramon Alvarez day and night for — it seems to me — an eternity. He’s a funny one.”

“How do you mean, Dad?”

“Well, I’ve grilled murder suspects by the hundreds in my time, and I’ve never run across one with just this combination of frankness and mulishness. He’s made some important admissions, such as being in the penthouse during the general crime period, but he keeps insisting he left her there alive. He won’t budge from it.”

“Why would you expect him to admit it?” asked the elder McKell. “Don’t murderers always deny their guilt?”

“Not as often as people think. Anyway, I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s telling the truth.”

“That’s nonsense, Dad,” Ellery said. “The man is guilty. I proved—”

“Maybe you didn’t, son.”

Ellery gaped at him.

“In any event, Inspector,” growled Ashton McKell, “all this is your problem, not ours. Why have you brought Dane back into it?”

“Because he may be able to help us clear this up once and for all.

“Let’s go back over this,” the old man said in a head-on, plodding sort of way. And he ticked off the time elements of the crime. Sheila Grey had sent Ashton away at a few minutes past ten — at 10:03 P.M. Then she had sat down and written her letter about Dane to the police. “We’ve had people write out the letter in longhand, as she did, trying to time the writing at the pace she must have used — it was fresh on her mind, a matter of urgency and fear, so she couldn’t have written slowly.

“Five policewomen tried it. The quickest time ran a few seconds over four minutes, the longest just under six. Let’s take the longest time. She had to go to her desk after you left, Mr. McKell, she had to sit down, take paper and pen from her drawer, write — and let’s even say she read the letter over, which she may not have done — seal it in the first envelope, write on it ‘To be opened in the event I die of unnatural causes,’ place the first envelope into the larger envelope, and write on that, ‘For the Police.’

“Now we’ve gone all through this, and no matter how we figure it, she simply couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes at the outside for the whole procedure. I think ten minutes is away over — eight would be far more likely. But let’s even call it ten. So she was finished with the letter and the sealing and so on by 10:13 at the latest. But she was shot at 10:23. What happened during those ten minutes? Okay, the killer came. But did it take him ten minutes to get the revolver out of the bedroom drawer and shoot her?”

“They talked,” Dane suggested.