The Fourth Side of the Triangle

“Then it still gets down to Ramon. He was more than Sheila’s blackmailer, he was also her lover. And if he was her lover, she dropped him for Dane, and jealousy proved stronger than greed. In my book Ramon remains her killer.”

“That’s the funniest part of it,” Inspector Queen said dryly, “if funny is the word. He says he wasn’t ever her lover. At all.”

“He says!” exploded Ellery. “I’m tired of hearing what Ramon says. He’s lying!”

“Take it easy, son.”

“He wasn’t her lover?” Ashton McKell said, in a painfully relieved way.

And his son said, “I don’t follow any of this.”

“I don’t blame you,” the old policeman said, “it’s one of those now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t cases. But this is one thing, Ellery, in which we don’t have to take Ramon’s word. We can prove it.”

“That he was her lover,” snapped Ellery, “or that he wasn’t?”

“That he was not. The name on Sheila Grey’s last finished drawing clinches it. When Ramon said he’d never had an affair with Sheila, we made a very careful laboratory examination of that sketch with the ‘Lady Norma’ on it. I don’t know which method the lab used — sulfide of ammonia or ultraviolet rays — but whichever it was, the lab reports a positive finding. And what they found will stand up in any court of law.

“Underneath the words ‘Lady Norma’ on the sketch, they found another name.”

Ellery had been through many ratiocinative crises in his life, but it was doubtful if any hit him as hard as his father’s disclosure this bleak January afternoon. Perhaps the long weeks of inactivity in a hospital room, the sheer lack of tone in his muscles from too little exercise, had dulled the edge of his mental weapon, so that when the revelation came, its assault was all the more devastating. He felt as if he had been struck a powerful blow.

He shaded his eyes with his hand, his brain stumbling over the implications of the statement. Whatever the name was, it was obviously not Norma; therefore, Ramon had not inspired an anagram for the collection; therefore, there was no reason to postulate Ramon as Dane’s predecessor in Sheila’s affections; therefore, the chauffeur was telling the truth; therefore, blackmailer-as-murderer-also was out the window; and the blood, at least, was washed from Ramon’s hands.

The murderer of Sheila Grey was someone else.

He had been completely wrong.

Completely!

Inspector Queen’s dry voice broke into his sodden thoughts. “You see, someone had used ink eradicator — there was a bottle of it on Sheila’s work desk — on the original collection name on the drawing, and then handprinted ‘Lady Norma’ over the erasure. Notice I said ‘handprinted’; because the name under ‘Lady Norma’ was handwritten. And without any question we can establish the handwriting of the erased collection name as being Sheila Grey’s.”

“I didn’t see an erasure,” muttered Ellery. “Ink eradicator! I ought to go back to kindergarten. Dad, what was the name underneath in Sheila’s writing?”

The Inspector reached into a portfolio and drew forth a photographic enlargement of the bottom portion of Sheila Grey’s last finished drawing. He handed it to Ellery, and the others crowded about, pushing a little.

“Here it is,” Ellery said, swallowing.

Two words in the now familiar Sheila Grey script stood out in the laboratory blowup through the printed ‘Lady Norma,’ like a ghost.

Lady Edna.

“Lady Edna,” Ellery said with difficulty as the others stared, speechless. “Edna — anagram of Dane.”

“So she did intend to name her collection after you,” Inspector Queen said to Dane, while Ellery fell into bitterest silence. “She must have done this before the argument that broke you up. And the drawing was lying there on her work desk that night. And with Ramon eliminated, who’s the only other one we know was on or about the scene of the murder, and who also had motive to erase the Dane anagram and substitute ‘Norma’ so as to throw suspicion on Ramon — can you tell us, Dane?”

Dane did not reply. His face was undergoing a dreadful transformation. Component features seemed to twist in incongruous directions at the same instant. His eyes burned with a feverish light. His hands clenched and unclenched and clenched again. A series of gibberish sounds began to growl in his throat.

Then Dane uttered a single maniacal cry and leaped at Inspector Queen’s throat.

The attack was so sudden that the Inspector was taken by surprise. Before he could raise his hands, Dane’s fingers were closing about the old man’s throat and shaking the wiry body as if it were a puppy’s.

Ellery staggered forward, but his legs betrayed him; he fell. In the end it was Dane’s father who pitted brute strength against his son’s and pulled him off the Inspector.

The old man lay back, gasping and clutching his throat.

As if an electrical contact had been broken, a current shut off, Dane went limp. He covered his face with his hands, and he wept.