A Fine and Private Place (7 page)

“You understand Italian?”

“A very little. Why in cold blood?”

“One stroke of the weapon, I understand. Directed with great force and precision. That is not the work of anger or blind hatred. If my brother had been attacked in passion, there would have been not one blow but many.”

“You should be a detective, Mr. Importuna,” Ellery said. “You've just made a most important observation.”

Nino Importuna shrugged. “By the way, gentlemen, I apologize for the failure of my wife to make an appearance. Mrs. Importuna was very fond of Julio. His murder has so affected her I've had to forbid her to set foot in his apartment.”

“We'll have to talk to her, of course,” Inspector Queen said. “But there's no hurry, Mr. Importuna. At your wife's convenience.”

“Thank you. I understand you want to question my secretary again? Mr. Ennis here?”

“My son wants to.”

“Peter, tell Mr. Queen whatever he wants to know.”

The heavyset man retreated to the nearest wall. There was a chair nearby, but he leaned against the wall. His womanish mouth was compressed. He kept his eyes on Ennis.

“I suppose,” Peter Ennis said to Ellery, “you want me to repeat my story—I mean how I came to find—”

“No,” Ellery said.

“No?”

“No, I'd like you to tell me what your impressions were, Mr. Ennis, when you got over the first shock of finding Mr. Importunato murdered.”

“I'm afraid,” the blond secretary stammered, “I'm afraid I don't exactly understand what you …”

Ellery smiled at him. “I don't blame you for being confused. I'm not quite sure myself what I'm groping for. Let's try this: Was there anything about the room at that time that struck you, well, as different from usual? I understand you're familiar with all three apartments. Sometimes on entering familiar surroundings we get an uneasy feeling, a sense of disturbance, because something is out of place, or missing, or even added.”

“Of course, the overturned things, this broken stuff—”

“Aside from those, Mr. Ennis.”

“Well …”

“One moment.”

To Inspector Queen's eye Ellery was at the old point, like the bird dog he often resembled. He was almost quivering, he stood so still. He was concentrating his attention on something in the rug, about halfway between the end of the desk jutting into the room and the rear wall.

Suddenly he ran over to it, dropped to one knee, and studied it at close range. Then he scuttled over to a point well behind the desk, near the base of the rear wall, and intently examined something there. Whereupon he sprang to his feet, ran around to the front of the desk, got down on all fours, and peered underneath at a point about one-third the desk's length from the side wall.

This time when he rose he beckoned the patrolman.

“Would you help me, please?”

He directed the officer to lift the desk at its front corner, the corner nearest the side wall. “Just an inch or so. A little higher. That's it. Hold it a moment.” He peered closely at the rug directly below the corner leg. “Fine. Now over here.”

He had the patrolman repeat the procedure at each of the other corners of the desk. His examination at the rear corner beside the side wall took a little longer.

Finally he nodded to the patrolman and rose.

“Well?” There was no expectation of surprise in the Inspector's voice.

Ellery glanced over at Ennis and Importuna. His father replied with the slightest nod. Ellery promptly returned to his original point of survey. “If you'll examine the rug here,” he said, “you'll see a circular depression in it, of the same diameter as the end of one of these desk legs, but on a spot where no desk leg stands. On the other hand, if you raise the nearest corner of the desk and examine the rug where a leg
is
standing, you find a curious thing: the depression there is not nearly as deep as the one where no leg stands.

“Over here”—and Ellery proceeded to his second point of examination, behind the desk and almost at the base of the rear wall—“exactly the same phenomenon: a very deep depression where no desk leg now stands but where obviously one did stand for a long time. And where a corresponding leg actually does stand, there's a much shallower depression.

“Go around to the front of the desk, a short way from the side wall, and partway under the desk you'll see another deep depression, whereas the rug under the nearest leg to it shows the shallower depression, too.

“And if you examine the rug under the rear leg nearest the side wall, you discover the most interesting phenomenon of all: not a shallow depression, as where the other three legs now stand, but one even deeper than the other deep impressions! As if, in fact, that leg had been used as a pivot.

“The only possible conclusion,” Ellery said, “is that the desk was moved—shifted from where it usually stood to where it stands now. And, judging from the shallowness of the depressions under the legs in their present position, it was shifted very recently.”

“So?” the Inspector said in the same unmoved way.

“So let's use the deep depressions as guides—Officer, would you mind grabbing hold of the end of the desk here?—and, pivoting the desk on that rear leg at the side wall, let's set it down exactly on the deep depressions—no, a bit more, Officer; that's it—and we've got the desk back to where it customarily stands … catercornered, as you see, with the swivel chair virtually boxed in in what's now a triangular space behind the desk. Leaving hardly enough room at either end for anyone to get behind it. In fact, it must have been a tight squeeze for Mr. Importunato, with his bulk, when he wanted to sit down there. Isn't that so, Mr. Ennis?”

Peter Ennis's embarrassment was embarrassing. “I really don't know what to say, Mr. Queen. Of course this is the way the desk's always stood. I can't imagine why I didn't notice it had been shifted about from the catercornered position. Unless it was because of the shock …”

“That may well be it,” Ellery said pleasantly. “And you, Mr. Importuna? Apparently the shift has escaped you, too.”

“Mr. Importuna rarely comes down here—” Ennis began quickly.

“I can talk for myself, Peter,” Nino Importuna said, and the younger man flushed again. “I did notice the desk had been moved, Mr. Queen. The moment I walked in here. But I thought the police had moved it during their first investigation.” The eyes were illegible. “Does it make a difference? Do you see a meaning in it?”

“Every difference makes a difference,” Ellery said. “And yes, I see a meaning in it, Mr. Importuna. Like the button and the shoeprint—”

“Button? Shoeprint?” The multimillionaire stared. “Which button? Whose shoeprint? No one has told me—”

The Inspector enlightened him with a remarkable lack of reticence. The old man's eyes were equally difficult to read.

“The button and the shoeprint were plants to incriminate your brother Marco, Mr. Importuna,” Ellery explained. “The shifting of Julio's desk appears to have had a similar motivation. Marco is left-handed. From the position of the desk when Julio's body was found—parallel to the rear wall—and judging from which side of Julio's head received the blow, could the blow have been struck by a left-handed man? Yes, it could. So again we have an indication of Marco's guilt. Or at least no incompatibility with the concept.

“But now we know that the placement of the desk was also a plant. Because what happens when the desk is returned to its usual position, to the catercornered position in which it actually stood when the blow was struck? In this position it would have been impossible for a left-handed blow to have been delivered to the side of Julio's head on which we find the killing wound, as the merest consideration shows. There simply isn't enough room to swing the poker and hit that side of the head. The killer must have realized this and, in order to make the supposition of a left-handed blow possible, he had to shift the desk.

“So now,” Ellery said, “not only is the button suspect, not only is the shoeprint suspect, but the left-handedness is suspect, too. In short, all the evidence against Marco is suspect. Which will come as a great relief to Marco, I'm sure, but leaves us without a lead.”

He looked at his father. “You knew about the desk, too.”

Inspector Queen nodded. “That's why I was anxious to get you in on this, Ellery. This kind of extra-smart frame is up your alley, not ours.”

“I think,” Nino Importuna rasped, “I do not understand.”

“Somebody not only had it in for your brother Julio, Mr. Importuna,” Ellery said, “but apparently he's out to do your brother Marco dirt as well. Or at least he didn't shrink from setting Marco up for the rap, which hardly classifies him as a friend. Who hated Julio? And possibly Marco as well? Enough to murder the one and frame the other for it?”

“I already told Inspector Queen and the other police officials who've been here today, Mr. Queen, about Julio in that respect. I can't even imagine it in Julio's case. He was like a fat and frisky dog, a Saint Bernard puppy bumping into things in his play, knocking people over with his affection. He had no meanness, no wish to hurt anyone. Full of fun and jokes and good nature. Generous with money, always helping people. A pious man—”

“You're describing a saint, Mr. Importuna,” Ellery murmured. “But his portrait in this apartment suggests that the saint did have a few weaknesses. Gambling, for one.”

“If you're supposing that he was in financial difficulties with, say, the Mafia, or anyone in the world of violence, Mr. Queen, that would be very amusing. I assure you he was not. And if Julio had been, Marco and I would have bailed him out a hundred times over.” The soft lips were actually smiling.

“Women, for another,” Ellery said.

“Oh, yes, women,” Nino Importuna said with a shrug. “Julio had many women. By the time he was finished with them, they were richer and happier.”

“Women sometimes have husbands, Mr. Importuna. Jealous ones.”

“Julio didn't play around with married women,” the multimillionaire said sharply. “This has always been strictly forbidden in our family. The sanctity of the marriage vows was lashed into us from childhood. Julio would have been as likely to rape a nun as bed another man's wife.”

“What about your business empire, Mr. Importuna? You three could hardly have risen to where you are without having stepped on a great many toes—without, in fact, having ruined some lives. Was Julio a saint in your business affairs, too?”

The lips lifted again. “You don't hesitate to speak your mind, Mr. Queen, do you?”

“Not when murder is involved.”

The multimillionaire nodded. “A dedicated man, I see. No, Mr. Queen, Julio didn't care for big business. As he often remarked, he would have been happier as a
venditore di generi alimentari
, selling
pasta
and tomatoes and cutting cheese all day. I don't deny what you say. To make great sums of money in the international marketplace one must be—how do you say?—
inumano
…
spietato
… without feeling. Marco and I, mostly I, have been
spietato
when it was necessary. I never asked Julio to join us in such things, and he would have said no if I asked. I kept him clean for the sake of his peace of mind—for the sake of his soul, he'd say, laughing. As I said, a pious, a good, man. Everyone, everyone loved him.”

“Not everyone, I'm afraid,” Ellery said. “We know of at least one dissenter. And Marco, Mr. Importuna? Does everyone love Marco, too?”

The massive head shook, whether negatively or in irritation at the question Ellery could not decide. He said something softly and rapidly in Italian that Ellery could not catch. Observing Importuna's extraordinary eyes, he thought that perhaps it was just as well.

“I think,” Inspector Queen remarked suddenly, “we'll mosey on over across the hall, Mr. Importuna, and have ourselves an overdue session with your brother Marco.”

If his surroundings bespoke the man, Ellery ruminated en route, Marco Importunato was the mad sophisticate of the three brothers. His apartment was as unlike Julio's as the era of Andy Warhol differed from Michelangelo's Florence. Every ornamental sign of the late Victorian had been removed, rebuilt, or concealed. They passed through stark white cubical rooms, like stripped hospital wards, except for the floors, which met the feet with assaults of raw and clashing colors. The occasional expected artifact of the unexpected smote the eye—a writhing piece of furniture in an improbable material; an isolated assembly of articulated junkyard sculpture; or, as on one of the walls, a gigantic Texaco pump leaning out into the room like the Tower of Pisa, about to topple onto the pop art-lover's head. In one small room Ellery paused to admire a triumph of modernity over camp, a faithful reproduction of Whistler's
Arrangement in Grey and Black
—faithful, that is, except that the old lady's hand grasped a rather heroic banana. Another room was apparently given over to psychedelic performances of light; Ellery saw equipment—floods, spots, wheels, pinpoint lights that could be played on an organlike instrument—that must have required enough wiring for 10,000 watts. It struck him that Marco was the type of
Playboy
New Yorker who rushes out to buy a Maserati Ghibli because he is impressed with its capability to accelerate from zero to 100 mph in 19.8 seconds and heads straight for the West Side highway during the evening rush hour to try it out.

They found the owner of all these contemporary riches in an orthodox combined gymnasium and game room adjoining his private quarters. He was dressed in puce gym tights and he was sitting cross-legged on a trampoline clutching a highball glass of what looked and smelled like straight sour-mash whisky. The ebony-and-lucite bar nearby, evidently dragged in from elsewhere, showed ring traces of numerous antecedent libations.