The Devil's Cook by Ellery Queen

Author:Ellery Queen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504018432
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

13

The old house seemed to have withdrawn into depth and darkness to guard half a century of secrets. The long walk leading from the street was rough underfoot, the cracks between its broken bricks still sprouting the dead moss and grass left over from the summer. Captain Bartholdi, who had preceded Jay and Farley through the thin traffic from downtown, now preceded them from street to house. He went up across the high front porch and knocked on the front door, which seemed an absurdity to Jay until he realized that the place was now, of course, occupied by the police. The door swung open with a classic creak, and the three passed in, Bartholdi still in front.

“Well, Brady,” he said, “how’s everything?”

“Cold,” said Brady, a bulky shadow barely discernible. “I’d give a leg for a quart of hot coffee.”

“You’ll be relieved at midnight. No one’s been around, I suppose?”

“Not a soul, dead or alive. I won’t say I haven’t thought about ghosts.”

“These gentlemen are. Professor Miles and Mr. Moran. We’ll just have a quick look upstairs.”

“Right. Watch your step on the stairs. The carpet’s worn through in a couple of places.”

Bartholdi switched on a flashlight. He held it pointed at the floor. Jay followed, Farley followed Jay, and the three men climbed single file to the second floor, where Bartholdi opened the first door on his right. Jay, beside him, could have sworn that a breath of colder air issued from the room but he knew this was only the trickery of an inflamed imagination in an exhausted mind.

“This is the room,” Bartholdi said, “where the kids found her.”

He played the light on floor and walls. On the floor lay nothing but a thin layer of dust, tracked now and disturbed in a far corner—where Bartholdi held the light steady for a minute—by a once-recumbent body. On the walls, only paper with a-design of faded roses, just slightly brighter in one small rectangular place where a picture had hung.

Bartholdi shut the door. The trio huddled in the hall, standing in the puddle of Bartholdi’s light.

“You see, Jay?” Bartholdi assumed the familiarity, to which he had been invited, without effort. “No tricks. No psychology.”

“Can you tell me, then, what has been gained by bringing me here?”

“Have you ever seen this house before?”

“I have no recollection of it.”

“Had your wife?”

“I wouldn’t know, but I should think it very unlikely.”

“She never mentioned any place that might seem, now that you are here, to have been a reference to this house?”

“No, not to me.”

They stood in silence, their feet unmoving in the bright puddle, a frail and tiny circumference established against the darkness. The cold numbed their flesh. Jay’s voice, when he spoke at last, was intense and harsh, almost guttural.

“Who could have done it? Who?”

“That remains to be seen. But we’ll find out.”

“But why kill her? If she was kidnapped, wouldn’t it have been better to let her live, at least until the ransom was collected?”

“It depends on the point of view. A dead victim can’t identify anybody.

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