Queens Full by Ellery Queen Read Free Book Online Page A

statement as we went to press.”
    Of Foster Benedict’s dying words no mention was made.
    Ellery ordered breakfast and hurried for his shower.
    He was finishing his second cup of coffee when the telephone rang. It was Roger.
    â€œWhere the devil did you hide Joan last night?”
    â€œIn my Aunt Carrie’s house.” Roger sounded harassed. “She’s in Europe, left me a key. Joan was in no condition to face reporters or yak with the likes of Emmeline DuPré. Her father knows where we are, but that’s all.”
    â€œDidn’t you tell Newby?”
    â€œTell Newby? It’s Newby who smuggled us over to Aunt Carrie’s. Considerate guy, Newby. He has a cop staked out in the back yard and another in plain clothes parked across the street in an unmarked car.”
    Ellery said nothing.
    â€œMe, too,” Roger said grimly. “I gave Joanie a sleeping pill and stayed up most of the night biting my nails. Far as I know, Newby has no direct evidence against Joan, just those last words of a dying man whose mind was already in outer space. Just the same, I’ll feel better with a lawyer around. Before I call one in, though …” Roger hesitated. “What I mean is, I’m sorry I blew my stack last night. Would you come over here right away?”
    â€œWhere is it?” Ellery chuckled.
    Roger gave him an address on State Street, in the oldest residential quarter of town.
    It was an immaculately preserved eighteenth-century mansion under the protection of the great elms that were the pride of State Street. The black shades were drawn, and from the street the clapboard house looked shut down. Ellery strolled around to the rear and knocked on the back door, pretending not to notice the policeman lurking inside a latticed summerhouse. Roger admitted him and led the way through a huge kitchen and pantry and along a cool hall to a stately parlor whose furniture was under dust covers.
    Joan was waiting in an armchair. She looked tired and withdrawn.
    â€œThis is all Roger’s idea,” she said, managing a smile. “From the way he’s been carrying on—”
    â€œDo you want my help, Joan?”
    â€œWell, if Roger’s right—”
    â€œI’m afraid he is.”
    â€œBut it’s so stupid, Mr. Queen. Why would Foster Benedict accuse me? And even if he had some mysterious reason, how can anyone believe it? I didn’t go near him … I’ve always hated knives,” she cried. “I couldn’t use a knife on a trout.”
    â€œIt isn’t a trout that was knifed. Joan, look at me.”
    She raised her head.
    â€œDid you kill Benedict?”
    â€œNo! How many times do I have to say it?”
    He lit a cigaret while he weighed her anger. She was an actress of talent and resource; her performance the night before in the face of Benedict’s coarse horseplay had proved that. It was a difficult decision.
    â€œAll right, Rodge,” Ellery said suddenly. “Speak your piece.”
    â€œIt’s not mine. It’s Joan’s.”
    â€œI’m all ears, Joan.”
    Her chest rose. “I lied to Chief Newby when I said I’d never known Foster Benedict before last night. I met Foster six years ago here in Wrightsville. I was still in high school. Roger was home from college for the summer.”
    â€œIn Wrightsville? ”
    â€œI know, he acted as if he’d never heard of Wrightsville. But then I realized it wasn’t an act at all. He’d simply forgotten, Mr. Queen. He was one of Scutney Bluefield’s house guests for a few weeks that summer.”
    â€œHe didn’t even remember Scutney,” Roger said bitterly. “Let’s face it, the great lover was one step ahead of the butterfly net.”
    â€œThen it was a practical lunacy,” Ellery remarked. “For six months out of every year in the past ten or twelve years Benedict practiced house-guesting as a form