Inspector Queen's Own Case Read online

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Suppose the doctor finds it—him … not as represented?”

  Humffrey frowned. “He looks sound enough to me, Sarah.”

  “Yes, but dealing with a lawyer like this Finner—”

  “There you go again,” her husband said with a trace of irritation. “Finner is reliable, Sarah. I’ve been assured of that. And you read the case histories yourself.”

  “But not knowing who his people are—”

  “Must we go back to that, my dear? I don’t want to know who his people are. In a case like this, knowledge is not only a nuisance, it’s dangerous. This way there’s no fuss, no red tape, no embarrassing publicity, and no possibility of repercussions later. We know that he comes of good Anglo-Saxon stock, and that the stock is certified as having no hereditary disease on either side, no feeble-mindedness, no criminal tendencies. Does the rest matter?”

  “I suppose not, Alton.” His wife fumbled with her gloves. “Nurse, why doesn’t he stop crying?”

  “You watch,” Miss Sherwood said over the baby’s furious blats. “Henry, the bottle should be ready.” The chauffeur hastily handed it to her. She removed the aluminium cap and shook some of the milk on to the back of her hand. Nodding, she popped the nipple gently into the little mouth. The baby stopped in mid-blat. He seized the nipple with his tiny jaws and began to suck vigorously.

  Mrs. Humffrey stared, fascinated.

  Alton K. Humffrey said almost gaily, “Henry, drive us back to the Island.”

  * * *

  The old man turned over in bed and his naked arms flew up against the light from somewhere. It was the wrong light or the wrong direction. Or wasn’t it morning? Something was wrong.

  Then he heard the surf and knew where he was and squeezed his eyelids as hard as he could to shut out the room. It was a pleasant room of old random furniture and a salt smell, with rusty shrimp dangling from bleached seaweed on the wallpaper. But the pale-blue wavery water-lines ran around and around like thoughts, getting nowhere, and they bothered him.

  The night air still defended the room coolly, but he could feel the sun ricocheting off the sea and hitting the walls like waves. In two hours it would be a hotbox.

  Richard Queen opened his eyes and for a moment looked his arms over. They’re like an anatomical sketch of a cadaver, he thought, worn-out cables of muscle and bone with corrugated covers where skin used to be. But he could feel the life in them, they could still hold their own, they were useful. He brought his hands down into focus, examined the knurls of joints, the rivuleted skin, each pore like a speck of dirt, the wiry debris of grey hairs; but suddenly he closed his eyes again.

  It was early, almost as early as when he used to wake in the old days. The alarm would go off to find him already prone on the braided rug doing his fifty push-ups—summer or winter, in green spring light or the grey of the autumn dawn. The hot shave and cold shower, with the bathroom door shut so that his son might sleep on undisturbed. The call-in from the Lieutenant, while breakfast was on the hod, to report any special developments of the night. The Sergeant waiting outside, the drive downtown. Headed for another working day. Listening to the general police calls on the way down, just in case. Maybe a direct word for him on the radiophone from the top floor of the big gold-domed building on Centre Street. His office … “What’s new this morning?” … orders … the important mail … the daily teletype report … the 9 a.m. line-up, the parade of misfits from the Bullpen …

  It was all part of a life. Even the corny kidding, and the headaches and heartaches. Good joes sharing the raps and the kudos while administrations came and went, not touching them. Not really touching them, even in shake-ups. Because, when the dust settled, the old-timers were still there. Until, that is, they were shoved out to pasture.

  It’s hard to break the habits of a lifetime, he thought. It’s impossible. What do those old horses think about, munching the grass of their retirement? The races they’d won? The races they could still win, given the chance?

  The young ones coming up, always coming up. How many of them could do fifty push-ups? At half his age? But there they were, getting set, getting citations and commendations if they were good enough, a Department funeral if they stopped a bullet or a switchblade …

  There they were. And here am I …

  Becky was stirring in the next room carefully. Richard Queen knew it was Becky, not Abe, because Abe was like a Newfoundland dog, incapable of quiet; and the old man had been visiting in the beach house with its papery walls long enough to have learned some intimate details of the Pearls’ lives.

  He lay in the bed idly.

  Yes, that was Becky creeping down the stairs so as not to wake her husband or their guest. Soon the smell of her coffee, brown and brisk, would come seeping up from the kitchen. Beck Pearl was a small friendly woman with a big chest and fine hands and feet that were always on the move when her husband was around.

  On the beach the gulls were squabbling over something.

  Inspector Queen tried to think of his own wife. But Ellery’s mother had died over thirty years ago. It was like trying to recall the face of a stranger glimpsed for an instant from the other end of a dark corridor.

  Here comes the coffee …

  For a while the old man let the drum and swish of the surf wash over him, as if he were lying on the beach below the house.

  As if he were the beach, being rhythmically cleaned and emptied by the sea.

  What should he do today?

  * * *

  A few miles from the old man in the bed there was an island, connected to the Connecticut mainland by a private causeway of handsome concrete. A fieldstone gatehouse with wood trim treated to look like bleached driftwood barred the island end of the causeway. This gatehouse was dressed in creeper ivy and climber roses, and it had a brief skirt of garden hemmed in oyster shells. A driftwood shingle above the door said:

  Nair Island

  PRIVATE PROPERTY

  Restricted

  For the Use of

  Residents & Guests

  ONLY

  Two private policemen alternated at the gatehouse in twelve-hour shifts. They wore uniforms of white duck pants, brass-buttoned blue tunics, and white nautical caps with black visors and gold braid; and they carried .38 automatics in shiny holsters strapped about their waists.

  Nair Island had six owners, who shared its two hundred-odd acres in roughly equal holdings. In Taugus, the town on the mainland of which the island was an administrative district, their summer retreat was known—in a sort of forelock-tugging derision—as “Million-Nair” Island.

  The six millionaires were not clubby. Each estate was partitioned from its neighbours by a high thick fieldstone wall topped with shells and iron spikes. Each owner had his private yacht basin and fenced-off bathing beach. Each treated the mathematically landscaped road serving the six estates as if it were his alone. Their annual meetings to transact the trifling business of the community, as required by the bylaws of the Nair Island Association, were brusque affairs, almost hostile. The social solder that welded the six families together was not fellowship but exclusion.

  The island was their fortress, and they were mighty people. One was a United States Senator who had gone into politics from high society to protect the American way of life, which had been conspicuously kind to his family for over two centuries. Another was the octogenarian widow of a railroad magnate who lived in a Tudor pile with seventeen cats and eight servants. Another was chairman of the board of a banking house with branches on five continents. A fourth was an ageing philanthropist and humanitarian who loved the common people in the mass but could not stand them one by one. The philanthropist’s neighbour, commanding the seaward spit of the Island, was a retired Admiral who had married the only daughter of the owner of a vast shipping fleet.

  The sixth was Alton K. Humffrey.

  * * *

  Inspector Queen came downstairs shaved and dressed for the day in beige slacks, nylon sports shirt, and tan-and-white shoes. He carried his jacket over his arm.

  “Morning.”

  The Pearls returned his greeting heartily. Too heartily, he thought.

  “You’re so early, Richard.” Becky was pouring her husband’s coffee. She was in a crisp house dress, white and pink. Abe was in his uniform. “And my, all dressed up. I know! You met a woman on the beach yesterday.”

  The old man laughed. “What woman would mess with me?”

  “Don’t give me that. And don’t think Abe isn’t worried, leaving me alone in the house every day with an attractive man.”

  “And don’t think I’m not,” Abe Pearl said. “Squattez-vous, Dick. How’d you sleep?”

  “All right.” He sat down opposite his friend and accepted a cup of coffee from Beck Pearl gratefully. “Aren’t you up kind of early yourself this morning, Abe?”

  “With the summer people coming in, I never know what I’m going to find down at Headquarters. There was trouble at a beach party early this morning—some tanked-up teenagers. Want to sit in, Dick, just for ducks?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Go on, Richard,” Beck Pearl urged. “Trouble is, you’re bored. Vacations are always that way.”

  The old man smiled. “Working people take vacations. Not old discards like me.”

  “That’s fine talk! How do you want your eggs this morning?”

  “No breakfast, Becky. Thanks a lot.”

  The Pearls glanced at each other as the old man raised his cup. Abe Pearl shook his big head slightly.

  “Well, Dick, suit yourself,” he said. “I thought it might appeal to you. What do you hear from your son? I noticed you got a letter yesterday.”

  “Ellery’s fine. He’s in Rome now.
Thinking of visiting Israel.”

  “Why didn’t you go with him?” Mrs. Pearl asked. “Or weren’t you invited?” Her two sons were married, and she had definite ideas about what was wrong with the younger generation.

  “Invited? Ellery begged me. But I didn’t feel it would be right to interfere with his plans. He’s roaming around Europe looking for atmosphere and material, and I’d only be in his way.”

  “He wasn’t taken in by that poppycock, I hope,” Beck Pearl snorted.

  “He wanted to cancel his trip,” Richard Queen said quietly. “He only went because you and Abe were kind enough to ask me up here for the summer.”

  “Well! I should think so.”

  Abe Pearl rose. “You’re sure you won’t sit in, Dick?”

  “I thought I’d do a little exploring today, Abe. Maybe take your boat out, if you don’t mind.”

  “Mind!” Abe Pearl glared down at him. “What kind of dribble is that?” He kissed his wife fiercely and pounded out, making the dishes on the sideboard jingle.

  Through the window Inspector Queen watched his host back the black-and-white coupe with the roof searchlight out of the garage. For a moment the sun sparkled on the big man’s cap with the gold shield above the visor. Then, with a wave, Abe Pearl was gone.

  With his ability and popularity, the old man thought, he can hold down this chief’s job in Taugus for life. Abe used his head. He got out of the big time when he was still young enough to set up a new career for himself. He isn’t much younger than I am, and look at him.

  “Feeling sorry for yourself again, Richard?” Beck Pearl’s womanly voice said.

  He turned, reddening.

  “We all have to adjust to something,” she went on in her soft way. “After all, it isn’t as if you were like Abe’s older brother Joe. Joe never had an education, never got married. All he knew was work. He worked all his life on a machine, and when he got too old and sick to work any more he had nothing—no family, no savings, nothing but the few dollars he gets from the government, and the cheque Abe sends him every month. There’s millions like Joe, Richard. You’re in good health, you have a successful son, you’ve led an interesting life, you’ve got a pension, no worries about the future—who’s better off, you or Joe Pearl?”

  He grinned. “Let’s give Abe something to be jealous about.” And he got up and kissed his friend’s wife tenderly.

  “Richard! You devil.” Becky was blushing.

  “Old, am I? Bring on those eggs—sunnyside, and don’t burn the bacon!”

  But the lift was feeble. When he left the house and headed for Abe Pearl’s second-hand sixteen-foot cruiser, the old man’s heart was bitter again. Every man tasted his own brand of misery. You needed more than a successful past and a secure future. Becky had left one thing out, the most important thing.

  A man needed the present. Something to do.

  * * *

  The engine coughed its way into the basin and expired just as the sixteen-footer slid alongside the dock. Richard Queen tied up to a bollard, frowning, and looked around. The dock was deserted, and there was no one on the beach but a buxom woman in a nurse’s nylon uniform reading a magazine on the sand beside a net-covered perambulator.

  The old man waved. “Ahoy, there!”

  The nurse looked up, startled.

  “Could I possibly buy some gas here?” he bellowed.

  The woman shook her head vigorously and pointed to the pram. He walked down to the beach end of the dock and made his way across the sand toward her. It was beautiful sand, clean as a laundered tablecloth, and he had the uneasy feeling that he should not be making tracks in it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, taking off his hat. “Did I wake the baby?”

  The nurse was stooping over the carriage intently. She straightened up, smiling.

  “No harm done. He sleeps like a little top.”

  Richard Queen thought he had never seen a nicer smile. She was big and wholesome-looking; her pretty nose was peeling from sunburn. Close to fifty, he judged, but only because he had had long experience in such matters. To the amateur eye she would pass for forty.

  She drew him off from the pram a little way. “Did you say you were out of gas?”

  “Forgot to check the tank before I shoved off. It’s not my boat,” he said apologetically, “and I’m afraid I’m not much of a sailor. I just about made it to your dock when I saw your pump.”

  “You’re a trespasser,” she said with her crinkly smile. “This is private property.”

  “Nair Island,” he nodded. “But I’m desperate. Would you allow me to buy some juice for that contraption?”

  “You’d have to ask Mr. Humffrey, the owner, but I’m sure it wouldn’t do you any good. He’d like as not call the Taugus police.”

  “Is he home?” The old man grinned at the picture of Abe Pearl running over to Nair Island to arrest him.

  “No.” She laughed. “They’ve taken the cabin cruiser down to Larchmont to watch some yacht-racing. Mrs. Humffrey hasn’t stuck her nose out of the house since the baby came.”

  “Then if I helped myself nobody would know?”

  “I’d know,” she retorted.

  “Let me take a few gallons. I’ll send Mr. Humffrey a cheque.”

  “You’ll get me in trouble …”

  “I won’t even mention your name,” he said solemnly. “By the way, what is it?”

  “Sherwood. Jessie Sherwood.”

  “My name is Richard Queen, Mrs. Sherwood.”

  “Miss Sherwood, Mr. Queen.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Glad to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” Nurse Sherwood murmured.

  For some absurd reason they both smiled. The sun on the old man felt good. The blue sky, the sparks flying off the water, the salt breeze, everything felt good.

  “I really don’t have any place to go, Miss Sherwood,” he said. “Why don’t we sit down and visit?”

  The crinkles went out of her smile. “If it got back to Mr. and Mrs. Humffrey that I’d entertained a strange man on the beach while I was minding the baby they’d discharge me, and they’d be perfectly right. And I’ve got awfully attached to little Michael. I’m afraid I can’t, Mr. Queen.”

  Nice, he thought. Nice woman.

  “Of course,” he said. “It’s my fault. But I thought … You see, I’m an old friend of Chief of Police Pearl’s of Taugus. In fact, I’m spending the summer with him and Mrs. Pearl in their shack on the beach.”

  “Well!” she said. “I’m sure Mr. Humffrey wouldn’t mind that. It’s just that they’re so nervous about the baby.”

  “Their first?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “They’re smart. Parents can’t be too careful about their children, especially if they’re rich.”

  “The Humffreys are multi-millionaires.”

  “Chief Pearl tells me they’re all loaded on Nair Island. I remember a snatch case I investigated a few years ago”

  “Case? Are you a police officer, too, Mr. Queen?”

  “Was,” he said. “In New York. But they retired me.”

  “Retired you! At your age?”

  He looked at her. “How old do you think I am?”

  “About fifty-five.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “I never just say things. Why, are you older?”

  “I quote Section 434a dash two one point o of the Administrative Code of the City of New York,” he said grimly, “which states as follows: ‘No member of the police force in the department except surgeons of police,’ etcetera, ‘who is or hereafter attains the age of 63 years shall continue to serve as a member of such force but shall be retired and placed on the pension rolls of the department.’” He added after a moment, “You see, I know it by heart.”

  “Sixty-three.” She looked sceptical.

  “My last birthday.”

  “I wouldn’t have believed it,” she murmured.

  From the depths of the pram came a squawk. Nurse Sherwood hurried to its source, and he followed. He could not help taking in the curve of her hips, the youthful shoulders, the pretty legs and ankles.

  It was just a cry in the baby’s sleep. “He’ll be waking up for his feeding soon,” she said softly, fussing with the netting. “Is your wife visiting with Chief and Mrs. Pearl, too?”