Free The King is Dead by Ellery Queen

did, and they found inside a sheet of richly engraved and monogrammed stationery of the same colour and texture covered with gold ink writing in a firm feminine hand. Inspector Richard Queen and Mr. Ellery Queen were requested to appear in the private apartments of the Bendigo family at 7 p.m. for cocktails and dinner. Dress was informal. The signature was Karla Bendigo . There was a postscript: She had heard so much of the Queens from her brother-in-law Abel that she was looking forward with delight to meeting them, and she concluded by apologizing — with what seemed to Ellery significant vagueness — for having been ‘unable to do so until now’.
    They had hardly finished reading the invitation before their valet appeared with a dark blue double-breasted man’s suit, dully gleaming black shoes, a pair of new black silk socks, and a conservative blue silk necktie. Ellery relieved the man of them and nudged him out before the snarl formed in the Inspector’s nose.
    â€˜Try them on, Dad. Chances are they won’t fit, and you’ll have an excuse for not wearing them.’
    They fitted perfectly, even the shoes.
    â€˜All right, wise guy,’ growled the Inspector. ‘But the school I was brought up in, if your guests want to show up in their underwear the host strips, too. Who the devil do these people think they are?’
    So at five minutes of seven, Ellery in his best oxford grey and the Inspector uneasily elegant in Jones’s finery, the Queens left their suite and went upstairs.
    Different guards were on duty in the foyer on the top floor. They were under the command of a younger officer, who scrutinized Karla Bendigo’s invitation microscopically. Then he stepped back, saluting, and the Queens were passed through the portals, feeling a little as if they ought to remove their shoes and crawl in on their stomachs.
    â€˜That head will roll,’ murmured Ellery.
    â€˜Huh?’ said his father nervously.
    â€˜If we snitch on him. He didn’t fingerprint us.’
    They were in a towering reception room full of black iron, hamadryads in marble, giant crystal chandeliers, and overwhelming furniture in the Italian baroque style. Across the room two great doors stood open, flanked by footmen in rigor mortis . An especially splendid flunkey wearing white gloves received them with a bow and preceded them to the double door.
    â€˜Inspector Queen and Mr. Ellery Queen.’
    â€˜Just a little snack with the Bendigos,’ mumbled the Inspector; then they both stopped short.
    Coming to them swiftly across a terrazzo floor was a woman as improbably beautiful as the heroine of a film. But Technicolor could never adequately have reproduced the snowiness of her skin and teeth, the sunset red of her hair, of the tropical green of her eyes. Even allowing for the art, there was a fundamental colour magic that startled, and it enlivened a person that was disquieting in form. A great deal of the person was on display, for she was wearing a strapless dinner gown of very frank décolletage. The gown, of pastel green velvet, sheathed her to the knees; from the knees it flared, like a vase. Despite her colouring, she was not of Northern blood, Ellery decided, because she made him think of Venezia, San Marco, the Adriatic, and the women of the doges. Studying her as she approached, he saw earth in her figure, breeding in her face, and no nonsense in her step. A Titian woman. Fit for a king.
    â€˜Good evening,’ she exclaimed, taking their hands. Her voice had the same colouring; it was a vivid contralto, with the merest trace of Southern Europe. She was not so young, Ellery saw, as he had first thought. Early thirties? ‘I am so happy to receive you both. Can you forgive me for having neglected you?’
    â€˜After seeing you, madam,’ said Inspector Queen with earnestness, ‘I can forgive you anything.’
    â€˜And to be repaid with gallantry!’ She