Free Inspector Queen’s Own Case by Ellery Queen

wash and iron those exquisite little garments of Michael’s …
    â€œTinny, Borcher.” Chief Pearl’s two detectives came over. “Take a couple of men and split up. Look for a pillowcase with a lace edging, a case with a dirty handprint on it. Cover the laundry basement, hampers, linen closets, fireplaces, garbage—the likely ones first. If you don’t find it, tear the place apart.”
    People with watery outlines and sounds that mixed and jangled endlessly kept floating in and out of Jessie’s awareness. She knew she had to sit there and hold on to herself in this strange world outside time, or horrible things would happen. Through it all she strained to hear little Michael’s voice, more than ever convinced by the unsubstantial quality of things that it had all happened in a dream, or a film. Sooner or later there would be a snap, the film would break, and the world would be restored to sanity and rightness.
    Occasionally she felt Richard Queen’s touch on her shoulder. Once he put his palm to her forehead. His hand felt dry and cool, and Jessie looked up at him. “Please keep it there: It feels good.” But he took it away after a moment, embarrassed.
    One of the fragments involved Sarah Humffrey and their attempts to question her. Jessie heard the commotion going on in the master bedroom without much interest. The frantic woman kept screaming that it was all her fault, that she had killed her baby, her blessed baby, she deserved to die, she was a monster, a criminal, let her die, oh her poor innocent baby. The men’s voices came up and through and around her self-accusing aria in discordant counterpoint, her husband’s by turns soothing, mortified, pleading, like a violin twanging the gamut; Dr. Wicks’s snappish and brittle—he’s the oboe, Jessie thought, pleased with her fancy; the insinuating trombone of Merrick, the Bridgeport man, sliding in and out of the conversation; Chief Pearl’s bass horn underscoring the whole crazy fugue. Finally the men came out, the chief and the State’s Attorney’s man bleak with anger at Dr. Wicks, Alton Humffrey almost female in his distress and irritation.
    â€œShe’s not a well woman,” the millionaire kept exclaiming in a high excited voice, oddly unlike the voice Jessie knew. “You’ve got to understand that, gentlemen … my wife has never been strong emotionally … hypersensitive … this shocking experience …”
    Dr. Wicks snapped, “Mrs. Humffrey is in a dangerous state of emotional agitation. As a matter of fact, her distress is so severe that I doubt whether her judgment can be relied on. I’m speaking as her physician, gentlemen. If you insist on keeping this up, you’ll have to assume the responsibility.”
    â€œI can’t allow it, Mr. Pearl,” Alton Humffrey said, waving his long arms. “I can’t and I won’t, do you hear?”
    Abe Pearl glanced at Merrick, and Merrick shrugged.
    â€œI know when I’m licked, I guess,” the chief growled. “All right, Doctor, put her under”; and Dr. Wicks disappeared.
    Jessie heard his voice going in the other room, on and on like a go-to-sleep record for insomnia, and the clash of bedsprings as Sarah Humffrey threw herself about. Finally the sobs and shrieks stopped.
    Later Jessie became aware of a shift in focus. They were back at her again. The house had been ransacked from basement to attic, it seemed, and the searchers had failed to turn up a pillowslip such as she had described, a lace-edged case with a dirty handprint on it.
    Yes, the nightlight in the nursery had been quite dim. But no, she had not been mistaken. There was enough light to see the handprint by.
    No, she didn’t wear glasses. Yes, she had 20/20 vision.
    No, it couldn’t have been a trick of lighting, a conformation of shadows that just looked like a handprint. It was a handprint. Of a