“Fool you?”

  “I followed the Haight and Fox cases pretty closely.”

  “I fatted in both of them.”

  “Did you?”

  Diedrich grinned at Ellery. Ellery grinned back.

  “I’m afraid I did.”

  “Not a chance. I told you, I’m a Queen expert. Shall I tell you what you did?”

  “I’ve told you.”

  “I hesitate to call my honored guest a cockeyed liar,” chuckled Diedrich, “But you solved the murder of Rosemary Haight—and it wasn’t young Jim, even though he did pull that fool stunt of making a break at Nora’s funeral and running that newspaper woman’s car—what was her name?—off the road in his escape. You were protecting somebody, Mr. Queen. You took the rap.”

  “That wouldn’t give me a very good character, would it?”

  “Depends. On whom you were protecting. And why. The mere fact that you did a thing like that—you being what you are—is a clue.”

  “Clue to what, Mr. Van Horn?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve beaten my brains out about it for years. Mysteries bother me. I guess that’s why I’m such a sucker for them.”

  “You have my type of mind,” remarked Ellery. “Labyrinthine. But go on.”

  “Well, I’d bet a whole lot that Jessica Fox didn’t commit suicide, either. She was murdered, Mr. Queen, and you proved it, and what’s more you proved who murdered her…I think…and you withheld the truth about that, too, for I suppose the same reason.”

  “Mr. Van Horn, you should have been a writer.”

  “What I don’t get in the Fox case—what I didn’t get in the Haight case, for that matter—is where the truth might lie. I know all the people involved in both cases, and I’d swear none of ’em’s the criminal type.”

  “Doesn’t that answer your question? Things were what they seemed and I failed to establish otherwise.”

  Diedrich was looking at him through the smoke of his cigar. Ellery looked back, politely. Then Diedrich laughed.

  “You win. I won’t ask you to violate any confidences. But I did want to establish my right to be known as the number one Queen fan of Wrightsville.”

  “I won’t even react to that one,” murmured Ellery, “on advice of counsel.”

  Diedrich nodded with enjoyment, pulling on his cigar. “Oh, and just to reassure you, you’re not going to be pestered while you’re here. I want you to use this house as if it were your own. Please don’t stand on the slightest ceremony. If you don’t feel like eating with us at any time, just tell Sally and she’ll have Laura or Eileen serve you in the guest house. We have four cars and you’re welcome to use any one of them if you feel like getting away from us, or running over to the public library, or just running.”

  “This is really handsome of you, Mr. Van Horn.”

  “Selfish. I want to be able to brag that your book was written on Van Horn property. And if we bother you, Mr. Queen, it’ll be a bad book and then I shan’t have so much to brag about. D’ye see?”

  While Ellery was laughing, Sally came in, straight-arming a sheepish Howard before her. Howard was loaded down with reference books and his bruised face was alive again.

  For the remainder of the evening they sat listening to his enthusiastic plans for recreating the gods of ancient Rome.

  It was after midnight when Ellery left the main house to return to the cottage.

  Howard walked him out to the terrace, and they had a few minutes alone together.

  The moon was being coy and beyond the terrace lay overlapping darknesses. But someone had turned the lights on in the guest house and it poked fingers into the garden like a woman exploring her hair. A breeze played on the invisible trees and overhead the stars stirred, as if they were cold.

  They stood side by side smoking cigarets in silence.

  Finally Howard said: “Ellery, what do you think?”

  “About what, Howard?”

  “About this Art Museum deal.”

  “What do I think?”

  “You don’t go for paternalism, do you?”

  “Paternalism?”

  “Father buying me a museum to make sculptures for.”

  “That’s bothering you?”

  “Yes!”

  “Howard.” Ellery paused to grope for the right words; talking to Howard called for a diplomat’s tact. “Cellini’s saltcellar was made possible by Francis the First. In a very real sense Pope Julius was every bit as important to the Sistine ceiling, the Moses in Vincoli, and the Slaves at the Louvre, as Michelangelo. Shakespeare had his Southampton, Beethoven his Count Waldstein, van Gogh his brother Théo.”

  “You put me in distinguished company.” Howard stared into the gardens. “Maybe it’s because he’s my father.”

  “Etymologically, patron and father come from the same womb.”

  “Don’t be cute. You know what I mean.”

  “Do you feel,” asked Ellery, “that if you weren’t Diedrich Van Horn’s son, you wouldn’t get this commission?”

  “That’s it. It would be put on the usual competitive basis—”

  “Howard. I saw enough of your work in Paris to tell me you have considerable talent. In ten years you can’t help but have grown as an artist. But let’s assume you’re no good—no good at all. As long as we’re discussing this frankly…What’s wrong with the patronage system in art is that too often the creation of the art work depends on the whim of the patron. But when the whim is there, a positive good results.”

  “You mean if my sculpture is good.”

  “Even if your sculpture is not so good. Hasn’t it occurred to you that unless you do those statues, your father won’t come across with those fantastic funds necessary to make the Art Museum a reality? It’s brutal, certainly; but we live in a brutal world. You’re making it possible for Wrightsville to acquire an important cultural institution. That’s something to work for. I hope it doesn’t sound stuffy, Howard, but the fact is your job is to do the finest sculpture you’re capable of—not so much for your own sake or your father’s as for the sake of the community. And if you should pull off a really bang-up job, why, the fact that you’re home talent will give the project an added and very strong local appeal.”

  Howard was silent.

  Ellery lit another cigaret, fervently hoping his argument sounded more convincing than it felt.

  Finally, Howard laughed. “There’s a flaw in that somewhere, but I’m damned if I can find it. It sounds good, anyway. I’ll try to keep it in mind.” And then he said, in a different way, “Thanks, Ellery.”

  He turned to go into the house.

  “Howard.”

  “What?”

  “How are you feeling?”

  Howard stood there. Then he turned back, patting his swollen eye. “I’m just beginning to appreciate how smart my old man is. This Art Museum business drove all that out of my head! I’m feeling fine.”

  “Still want me to hang around?”

  “You’re not thinking of leaving!”

  “I simply wanted to find out how you feel about it.”

  “For God’s sake, stay!”

  “Of course. Incidentally, there are certain disadvantages to the housing arrangement. You on the top floor of the main house, me over there at the cottage.”

  “You mean in case I get another attack?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why not bunk with me? I have the whole top floor—”

  “Then I wouldn’t have the privacy I need for that blamed novel, Howard. I’ll be doing a lot of night work. Wish I didn’t have that contract commitment…Do the attacks often come in the middle of the night?”

  “No. As a matter of fact, I can’t recall a single one coming on while I was asleep.”

  “Then my job is not to turn in myself until you’re snoring. That simplifies it. During the day I’ll work where I can keep an eye on the front door here. At night I won’t go to bed until I’m reasonably certain you’re in dreamland. Is that your bedroom? Where the light is, up on the top floor?”

  “No, that’s the big window of my studio. My bedroom is to the right of that. It’s dark now.”

  Ellery nodded. “Go to bed.”

  But Howard did not move. He was slightly turned away and his face was in shadow.

  “Something else on your mind, Howard?”

  Howard stirred, but no sound came from him.

  “Then hit the sack, slug. Don’t you know I can’t until you do?”

  “Good night,” said Howard in a very odd voice.

  “Good night, Howard.”

  Ellery waited until the front door closed. Then he crossed the terrace and slowly made his way around the star-specked pool to the cottage.

  He turned off the lights in the cottage, came out to sit down on the porch. He sat smoking his pipe in the dark.

  Apparently Diedrich and Sally had gone to bed: the second floor of the main house showed no lights. And after a moment the light in Howard’s studio went out. Another moment, and a window to the right lit up. Five minutes later that window, too, darkened. So Howard had turned in.

  Ellery sat there for a long time. Howard would not fall asleep easily.

  What was bothering Howard today, tonight? It wasn’t the amnesia. It was something new, or a fresh development or something old; something which had occurred in the last two days. Whom did it involve? Diedrich? Sally? Wolfert? Or someone Ellery had not met?

  The strain between Howard and Sally might be part of it. But there were other stresses. Between Howard and his unlovely uncle. Or the older stress, the stress of love, between Howard and his father.

  The dark big house faced him imperturbably.

  Dark and big.

  It was a big house to hate in. Or to love in.

  It came suddenly to Ellery that this was something re-experienced, this sitting in the Wrightsville night puzzling over a problem in Wrightsville relationships. The night he had rocked on the porch of the Haight cottage after Lola and Patty Wright had gone…the night he had sat in the slide swing on the porch of Talbot Fox’s house…both down the Hill there, somewhere in the darker darkness. But he’d had his teeth into something then. This…this was like trying to take a bite out of the darkness itself.

  Maybe there was nothing. Maybe there was just Howard’s amnesia, for clear and unmysterious cause. And all the rest imagination.

  Ellery was about to knock out his pipe and go in to bed when his hand stopped in mid-air and every muscle stiffened with alarm.

  Something had moved out there.

  His eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and he could make out degrees of it. It had dimensions now, gray spots and dappled spots, jigsaw pieces of the night.

  Something had moved in that lighter fragment, in the gardens beyond the pool, just short of the ghostly blue spruce.

  He was positive no one had come out of the house. So it could not be Howard. It must have been someone there all the time—all the time he and Howard had stood on the terrace talking, all the time he had sat here alone before the cottage, smoking and thinking.

  He strained, squinting, trying to get through the shadows.

  He remembered now that there was a marble garden seat on that spot.

  With this he tried to take apart the darkness. But the more, he looked, the less he saw.

  He was about to call out when a shower of light fell on the pool and the garden. The cloud had backed away from the moon.

  Something was on the garden seat. A great lump of a thing that spilled over to the ground.

  As his eyes readjusted themselves, he saw what it was.

  It was a figure draped in cloths, or a cloak; a female figure, to judge from the fullness around the legs.

  It was still now.

  For a moment he recognized it. It was Saint-Gaudens’s sculpture of Death. The seated female with swathing garments, even her head covered and a face in darkness with one arm showing, the hand supporting the chin.

  But then the resemblance dissolved in shifting draperies as the moonlight struck life from the stone. And the figure, incredibly, rose, and it became an old, a very old, woman.

  She was so old that her back described the semicircle of an angry cat. She began to move, and her movements were secretive, with something ancient in them.

  And as she inched along, hovering over the earth, sounds came out of her. They were thin, faint sounds, with the haunting quality of whispers drifting on the wind.

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”

  And then she vanished.

  Utterly.

  One moment she was there. The next she was not.

  Ellery actually rubbed his eyes. But when he looked again, there was still nothing to be seen. And then another cloud concealed the moon.

  He cried out: “Who is that?”

  Nothing answered.

  A trick of the night. There’d been nothing there. And the words he had “heard” had been the echo of some racial memory in his brain. Talk of sculpture…the still deathly blackness of the house…concentrated thought…self-hypnosis…

  Because he was Ellery, he felt his way around the pool toward the now-invisible garden seat.

  He placed his hand on it, palm down.

  The stone was warm.

  Ellery went back to the cottage, put the light on, rummaged in his suitcase, found his flashlight, and returned quickly to the garden.

  He found the bush she had stepped behind an instant before the moon went out.

  But nothing else.

  She was gone, and there was no answer anywhere. He searched the grounds for a half-hour.

  The Third Day

  SALLY’S VOICE WAS SO taut with tension that he thought Howard had had another attack.

  “Ellery! Are you up?”

  “Sally. Something wrong? Howard?”

  “Heavens, no. I took the liberty of walking in. I hope you don’t mind.” Her laugh was pitched too high. “I’ve brought you your breakfast.”

  He washed quickly and when he came out into the living room in his robe he found Sally striding up and down, smoking a cigaret jerkily. She threw it immediately into the fireplace, snatched the lid off a large silver tray.

  “Sally, you’re a darling. But this wasn’t at all necessary.”

  “If you’re anything like Dieds and Howard, you like a hot breakfast the first thing. Coffee?”

  She was very nervous. She kept chattering.

  “I know I’m awful to do this. Your first morning here. But I didn’t think you’d mind. Dieds has been gone for hours, and Wolfert. I thought if you didn’t mind wasting your time sleeping so late, you wouldn’t mind my barging in on you with coffee and ham and eggs and toast. I know how anxious you must be to get to your novel. I promise I shan’t make this a habit. After all, Dieds did lay the law down about your not being disturbed and I’m a dutiful wife…”

  Her hands were trembling.

  “It’s all right, Sally. I wouldn’t have made a start for hours. You don’t know how many things a writer has to do before he can recapture the slimy thread of his story. Like cleaning his fingernails, reading the morning newspaper…”

  “That makes me feel better.” She tried to smile.

  “Have a cup of this coffee. It’ll make you feel better still.”

  She accepted the second cup which had been on the tray. He had noticed its presence at once.

  “I was hoping you’d ask me, Ellery.” Too light.

  “Sally, what’s the matter?”

  “I was hoping you’d ask me that, too.”

  She set her cup down; her hands were really shaking badly. Ellery lit a cigaret and got up and walked around the table and put the cigaret between her lips.

  “Lean back. Close your eyes, if you’d like.”

  “No. Not here.”

  “Then where?”

  “Anywhere but here.”

  “If you’ll wait till I dress—”

  Her face was haggard; something hurt. “Ellery, I don’t want to take you away from your work. It isn’t right.”

  “You wait, Sally.”

  “I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing this if—”

  “Now stop it. I’ll be out in three minutes.”

  Howard said from the doorway: “So you went to him after all.”

  Sally twisted in the chair, her hand on the back. She was so pale Ellery thought she was going to faint.

  Howard’s cheeks were gray.

  Ellery said calmly, “Whatever it is, Howard, I’d say offhand Sally was right to come to me, and you’re wrong to try to hold her back.”

  The swollen part of Howard’s lower lip gave his mouth a bitter twist.

  “Okay, Ellery. Get your clothes on.”

  When Ellery came out of the cottage, he saw a new convertible drawn up under the porte-cochere of the main house. Sally was at the wheel. Howard was just stowing a hamper away.

  Ellery walked over to them. Sally was wearing a deer-brown suede suit and she had bound her hair with a silk scarf, turban-fashion; she had made up rather heavily; her cheeks had color.

  She avoided his eyes.

  Howard seemed most particular about the hamper. He didn’t look up until Ellery was seated beside Sally. Then he squeezed in beside Ellery and Sally started the car.

  “What’s the hamper for?” Ellery asked cheerfully.

  “I had Laura put up a picnic lunch,” said Sally, very busy shifting gears.

  Howard laughed. “Why don’t you tell him why? It’s so if anybody calls up, the help can say we’ve gone on a picnic. See?”

  “Yes,” said Sally in a very low voice, “I’m getting quite clever at this.”

  She took the curves of the winding drive angrily. At the exit to North Hill Drive she turned left.

  “Where are we going, Sally? I’ve never been in this direction.”

  “I thought we’d run up to Quetonokis Lake. It’s in the foothills of the Mahoganies there.”

  “Good place for a picnic,” commented Howard.

  Sally looked at him then, and he flushed.

  “I’ve taken along some coats,” he said gruffly. “It’s kind of chilly up there this time of year.”

  And after that there was no conversation whatever, and Ellery was grateful.

  Under ordinary circumstances the drive north would have been a jaunt.