Inspector Queen's Own Case

  Inspector Queen’s

  Own Case

  Ellery Queen

  Part I

  AT FIRST THE INFANT

  The dove-coloured Chevrolet was parked fifty feet from the hospital entrance. The car was not new and not old, just a Sunday-hosed-looking family job with a respectable dent here and there in the fenders.

  The fat man squeezed behind the wheel went with it like a used tyre. He wore a home-pressed dark-blue suit with a few food spots on the lapels, a white shirt already damp from the early-morning June sun, and a blue tie with a wrinkled knot. A last summer’s Macy’s felt hat with a sweat-stained band lay on the seat beside him.

  The object in point was to look like millions of other New Yorkers. In his business, the fat man liked to say, visibility was the worst policy. The main thing was not to be noticed by some nosy noonan who could lay the finger on you in court afterwards. Luckily, he did not have to worry about impressing his customers. The people he did business with, the fat man often chuckled, would avail themselves of his services if he came to work in a bikini.

  The fat man’s name was Finner, A. Burt Finner. He was known to various labouring ladies of the nightclubs as Fin, from his hobby of stuffing sharp five-dollar bills into their nylons. He had a drab little office in an old office building on East 49th Street.

  Finner cleaned his teeth with the edge of a match-packet cover, sucked his cheeks in several times, and settled back to digest his breakfast.

  He was early, but in these cases the late bird found himself looking down an empty worm hole. Five times out of ten, Finner sometimes complained, they wanted to change their confused little minds at the last second.

  He watched the hospital entrance without excitement. As he watched, his lips began to form a fat O, his winkless eyes sank deeper into his flesh, the pear-shaped face took on a look of concentration; and before he knew it he was whistling. Finner heard his own music happily. He was that rarity, a happy fat man.

  The tune he was whistling was Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life.

  My theme song, he called it.

  When the girl came out of the hospital, the fat man was on the steps to greet her, smiling.

  * * *

  The seven-passenger limousine wound correctly along the slow lane of the parkway. It was old-fashioned, powerful, and immaculate.

  A chauffeur with white hair and a red face was at the wheel. Beside him rode a comfortably buxom woman with a pretty nose. She was in her late forties. Under her cloth coat she wore a nurse’s nylon uniform.

  Behind the chauffeur and the nurse there was shining glass, and behind the shining glass sat the Humffreys.

  Sarah Stiles Humffrey leaned forward to complain to the speaking-tube, “Henry, can’t you drive faster?”

  The white-haired chauffeur said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then why don’t you?” Mrs. Humffrey cried.

  “Because the legal limit on the Hutchinson River Parkway is forty, ma’am.”

  “You’re being difficult again. Alton, tell him to go faster.”

  Her husband smiled. “We’ll get there, Sarah.”

  “I’m nervous as a cat!”

  He patted her hand. She had a large hand, beautifully groomed. Mrs. Humffrey was a large woman, with large features over which she regularly toiled and despaired. She was not vain; she had long ago given up vanity to indulge a childish resentment at the genie that had drawn her body out like a Yankee farmer’s. It was really ironic, she would pout, because the last farmer in her family had pastured his cows on the Boston Common in the seventeenth century.

  Her husband might have been her male twin. This, too, was Mrs. Humffrey’s secret sorrow. Once, early in their marriage, she had shed tears in his arms. “Oh, Alton, why is it that what’s distinguished-looking in a man is so often ugly in a woman?”

  The outburst had displeased him. She never referred to her physical shortcomings again. But after that she began to wear—within the limits of conservative taste, of course—the most feminine frocks her dressmaker could design.

  Her husband was an angular man in a black suit so dreary it could only have been planned. A Humffrey had made the Mayflower crossing; and from the days of Cole’s Hill and Plimoth Plantation Humffreys had deposited their dust among the stones of New England. Many had distinguished themselves in colonial history; one of them founded the fortune; his sons and their sons and grandsons increased it; the Humffrey millions became a historic responsibility; tycoons arose among them, preachers, statesmen, Brahmins; and they all culminated in Alton K. Humffrey.

  He had married Sarah Stiles because he was the last of his line.

  There had been other reasons, of course. Marrying a Stiles was very nearly as desirable as being a Humffrey. Sarah Stiles had family, taste, and breeding; and she was plain, foreshadowing a proper attitude toward marriage. He was almost as comfortable with her as when he was alone. She respected tradition and shared his horror of vulgarity. And she placed the same high value on the name of Humffrey. Even her neurotic tendencies could be charming; they made him feel forgiving toward her.

  Forgiveness was necessary. In one thing she had failed him—unfortunately, in the most important thing. The fault was hers; he had never doubted it. Nor had she. Still, they had subjected themselves to the distasteful corroboration of medical science. It was true; Sarah Stiles Humffrey would never bear a child. Divorce being out of the question, they were doing the next best thing.

  So Alton K. Humffrey patted his wife’s hand.

  It was her left hand, and his right. He withdrew his quickly. Tolerant as he could be toward her imperfections, he could not forgive his own. He had been born without the tip of his little finger. Usually he concealed the offending member by curling it against his palm. This caused the ring finger to curl, too. When he raised his hand to hail someone the gesture looked Roman, almost papal. It rather pleased him.

  “Alton, suppose she changed her mind!” his wife was saying.

  “Nonsense, Sarah.”

  “But suppose she did?”

  “I’m sure we can rely on that lawyer fellow to see that she did not.”

  “I wish we could have done it in the usual way,” she said restlessly.

  His lips compressed. In crucial matters Sarah was a child. “You know why, my dear.”

  “I really don’t.”

  He decided to indulge her. “Have you forgotten that we’re not exactly the ideal age for a legal proceeding?”

  “Oh, Alton, you could have managed it.” One of Sarah Humffrey’s endearing qualities was her unconquerable conviction that her husband could manage anything.

  “This way is safest. No ghost to come haunting us five or ten years from now. And no publicity.”

  “Yes.” Sarah Humffrey shivered. Alton was so right. He always was. If only people of our class could live like ordinary people, she thought.

  Mrs. Humffrey leaned forward and said into the speaking-tube, “Henry, won’t you drive a little faster?”

  “No, ma’am,” the white-haired chauffeur said firmly.

  The buxom nurse beside him stared straight ahead, hands quietly in her lap, as if they were waiting.

  * * *

  When the girl came out of the hospital the fat man was on the steps to greet her, smiling.

  “Good morning!” he said. “All checked out okay?”

  “Yes.” She had a deep, slightly hoarse, voice.

  “No complications or anything?”

  “No.”

  “And our little arrival is well and happy, I hope?” Finner started to raise the flap of the blue blanket from the face of the infant the girl was carrying, but she put her shoulder in the way.

  “Don’t touch hi
m,” she said.

  “Now, now,” the fat man said. “I’ll bet he’s a regular lover-boy. How could he miss with such a doll for a ma?” He was still trying to get a look at her baby. But she kept fending him off.

  “Well, let’s go,” Finner said curtly.

  He took the rubberized bag of diapers and bottles of formula from her and waddled to his car. She dragged after him, clutching the blanketed bundle to her breast.

  The fat man had the front door open for her. She shook his hand off and got in.

  Finner shrugged. “Where do you want I should drop you?” he asked as he heaved his blubber up and over.

  “I don’t care. I guess my apartment.”

  He drove off cautiously. The girl held the blue bundle tight.

  She wore a green suede suit and a mannish felt pulled down over one eye. She was striking in a theatrical way, gold hair greenish at the scalp, big hazel eyes, a wide mouth that kept moving around. She had put on no make-up this morning. Her lips were pale and ragged.

  She lifted the blanket and looked down at the puckered little face with tremendous intentness.

  “Any deformities or birthmarks?” the fat man asked suddenly.

  “What?”

  He repeated the question.

  “No.” She began to rock.

  “Did you do what I told you about his clothes?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure there are no identifying marks on the clothes?” he persisted.

  “I told you!” She turned on him in fury. “Can’t you shut up? He’s sleeping.”

  “They sleep like drunks. Had an easy time, did you?”

  “Easy?” The girl began to laugh. But then she stopped laughing and looked down again.

  “Just asking,” Finner said, craning to see the baby’s face. “Sometimes the instruments—”

  “He’s perfect merchandise,” the girl said. “They’re getting their money’s worth.”

  She began to croon in a sweet and throbbing contralto, rocking the bundle again. The baby blatted, and the girl looked frantic.

  “Darlin’, darlin’, what’s the matter? Don’t cry … mama’s got you …”

  “Gas,” the fat man said. “Just bubble him.”

  She flung him a look of pure hate. She raised the baby to her shoulder and patted his back nervously. He burped and fell asleep again.

  A. Burt Finner drove in delicate silence.

  All at once the girl burst out, “I can’t, I won’t!”

  “Sure you can’t,” Finner said instantly. “Believe me, I’m no hard-hearted Hannah. I got three of my own. But what about him?”

  She sat there clutching her baby and looking trapped.

  “The important thing in a case like this is to forget yourself. Look,” the fat man said earnestly, “every time you catch yourself thinking of just you, stop and think what all this means to this fine little fella. Do it right now. What would it mean to him if you goofed off” now?”

  “Well, what?” she said in a hard voice.

  “Being raised in a trunk, is what. With cigar smoke and stinking booze fumes to fill his little lungs instead of God’s wonderful fresh air,” the fat man said, “that’s what. You want to raise a kid that way?”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” the girl said. “I’d never do it like that! I’d get him a good nurse—”

  “I can see you been thinking about it,” A. Burt Finner nodded approvingly, “even though we got an ironclad agreement. Okay, you get him a good nurse. So who’d be his mother, you or this nurse? You’d be slaving day and night to pay her salary and buy certified milk and all, and it’s her he’d love, not you. So what’s the percentage?”

  The girl shut her eyes.

  “So that’s out. So there he is, back in the trunk. So who’d baptize him, some hotel clerk in Kansas City? Who’d he play with, some rubberlips trumpet player on the junk? What would he teethe on, beer openers and old cigar butts? And,” the fat man said softly, “would he toddle around from table to table calling every visiting Elk from Dayton daddy?”

  “You bastard,” the girl said.

  “Exactly my point,” the fat man said.

  “I could get married!”

  He was driving along a side street on the West Side, just passing an empty space at one of the kerbs. He stopped, shifted, and backed the Chevrolet halfway in.

  “Congratulations,” Finner said. “Do I know this Mr. Schlemihl who’s going to take another guy’s wild oat and call him sonny-boy?”

  “Let me out, you fat creep!”

  The fat man smiled. “There’s the door.”

  She backed out, her eyes blazing.

  He waited.

  Not until her shoulders sagged did he know that he had won. She reached back in and laid the bundle carefully on the seat beside him and just as carefully shut the door.

  “Goodbye,” she whispered to the bundle.

  Finner wiped the sweat off his face. He took a bulky unmarked envelope from his inside pocket and reached over the baby.

  “Here’s the balance of your money,” he said.

  She looked up in a blind way. Then she snatched the envelope and hurled it at him. It struck his bald head and burst, showering bills all over the seat and floor.

  She turned and ran.

  “Nice to have met you,” the fat man said kindly. He gathered up the scattered bills and stuffed them in his wallet.

  He looked up and down the street. It was empty. He bent over the baby, undid the blanket, examined it. He found a department-store label on the beribboned lawn nightgown, ripped it off, and put the label in his pocket. He found another label on the tiny undershirt and removed that, too. Then he looked the sleeping infant over. Finally, he rewrapped it in the blue blanket and replaced it beside him.

  Then he examined the contents of the rubberized bag. When he was satisfied he rezipped it.

  “Well, bubba, it’s off to a long life and a damn dull one,” he said to the bundle on the seat. “You’d have had a hell of a lot more fun with her.”

  He glanced at his wristwatch, nodded briskly, and drove on toward the West Side highway.

  On the highway, driving at a law-abiding thirty, with an occasional friendly glance at the bundle, A. Burt Finner began to whistle.

  Soon his whistle changed to song.

  He sang, “Ahhhhh, sweet mys-tery of life and love I found youuuuuuuuu …”

  * * *

  The Chevrolet left the Hutchinson River Parkway between Pelham and New Rochelle. It turned into a deserted lane and pulled up behind a limousine with Connecticut plates that was parked there, waiting.

  Alton K. Humffrey sprang out of the limousine. He said something to the chauffeur and the nurse, and hurried over to the Chevrolet.

  “Here he is,” Finner beamed.

  Humffrey stared in at the blue blanket. Then without a word he opened the Chevrolet door.

  “Time,” Finner said.

  “What?”

  “There’s the little matter of the scratch,” the fat man smiled. “Remember, Mr. Humffrey? Balance C.O.D.?”

  The millionaire shook his head impatiently. He handed over a bulky unmarked envelope, like the one Finner had offered the girl in the suede suit. Finner opened the envelope and took out the money and counted it.

  “He’s all yours,” Finner said, nodding.

  Humffrey lifted the bundle out of the car gingerly. Finner handed out the rubberized bag, and the long thin man took that, too.

  “You’ll find the formula typed on a blank slip of paper in the bag,” the fat man said, “along with enough bottles and diapers to get you started.”

  Humffrey looked at him.

  “Something wrong?” Finner asked. “Did I forget something?”

  “The birth certificate and the papers,” Humffrey said grimly.

  “I told you, Mr. Humffrey. I’ll mail them to you as soon as they’re ready.”

  “It was my impression they’d be ready on delivery of the ch
ild.”

  “My people aren’t magicians,” the fat man said, smiling. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “I have very little choice.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Humffrey,” Finner said, still smiling. “But you’ll get them. And they’ll be regular works of art.”

  “Register the envelope to me, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Humffrey did not stir until the Chevrolet was gone. Then he walked back to the limousine slowly. The chauffeur was holding the tonneau door open, and Mrs. Humffrey’s arms were reaching through.

  “Give him to me, Alton!”

  Her husband handed her the baby. With trembling hands she lifted the flap of the blanket.

  “Miss Sherwood,” she gasped, “look!”

  The buxom nurse with the pretty nose had transferred to the tonneau. “He’s a little beauty, Mrs. Humffrey.” She had a soft impersonal voice. “May I?”

  She took the baby, laid it down on one of the jump-seats, and opened the blanket.

  “Nurse, he’ll fall off!”

  “Not at this age, Mrs. Humffrey,” the nurse smiled. “Mr. Humffrey, is that the bag that came with the baby? May I have it, please?”

  “Oh, why is he crying?”

  “If you were messed, hungry, and only one week old, Mrs. Humffrey,” Nurse Sherwood said, “you’d let the nasty world know about it, too. There, baby. We’ll have you clean and sweet in no time. Henry, plug the warmer into the dashboard and heat this bottle of formula. Mr. Humffrey, you’d better shut that door while I rediaper Master Humffrey.”

  “Master Humffrey!” Sarah Humffrey laughed and cried alternately while her husband peered in. He could not seem to take his eyes from the squirming little body. “Alton, we have a son, a son.”

  “Sarah, you’re actually excited.” Alton Humffrey was pleased.

  “Nurse, let’s not use the things from that bag, shall we? All the wonderful new things we’ve brought for you, baby!” Mrs. Humffrey zipped open a morocco case. It was full of powders, oils, sterilized cotton, picks, and other nursery necessities. The nurse took a bottle of baby oil and a tin of powder from it silently. “The first thing we’ll do is have him examined by that paediatrician in Greenwich, check his formula … Alton.”