Read Online Inspector Queen’s Own Case by Ellery Queen - Free Book Online

mean, Miss Sherwood?”
    â€œI mean that somebody else entered the nursery after Mrs. Humffrey went to bed.”
    The tall man looked at her with burning eyes.
    Jessie steeled herself and returned his look.
    â€œThat baby was murdered, Mr. Humffrey, and if you don’t call the police—this minute—I’m going to.”

2.
    CREEPING LIKE SNAIL
    Faces kept floating about the steamy room. All the weight had bobbed out of Jessie’s head. It felt taut and airy, like a balloon. In the nightmare she knew with curious certainty that her alarm would go off any minute. She would wake up in a solid world, jump out of bed, listen for the baby’s gurgling, shuffle into the nursery with a bright good morning …
    â€œSit down, Jessie.”
    â€œWhat?”
    It was miraculously Richard Queen. He was urging her back into the rocker, putting a glass to her dehydrated lips. He had called her Jessie, so it was still the nightmare. Or perhaps the nightmare was turning into a harmless dream.
    â€œDrink it.”
    The flow of cold water down her throat awakened her. She saw the room now as it was. The nursery was full of men peering, measuring, talking, weighing, as impersonal as salesmen—state troopers and Taugus policemen and an unshaven man without a tie whom she distantly recalled as having arrived carrying a briefcase.
    â€œAre you feeling better now, Miss Sherwood?” That was Chief Pearl’s rumble.
    â€œIt’s just that I haven’t had any sleep,” Jessie explained. What had they been talking about when the room began to swim? She couldn’t remember. All she could remember was Chief Pearl’s bass voice, the enormous mass of him, his drilling eyes.
    â€œAll right. You went into the nursery with Mrs. Humffrey, you bent over the crib, you saw the pillow lying on the baby’s face, you grabbed it away, you saw that he had suffocated, and you automatically began to give him first aid, artificial respiration, even though you had every reason to believe he was dead.
    â€œNow think back, Miss Sherwood. How long would you say it took you—starting from your first sight of the pillow over the baby’s face—to get past the shock and snatch that pillow off him?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Jessie said. “It seemed like an eternity. But I suppose it wasn’t more than a second or two.”
    â€œOne or two seconds. Then you grabbed the pillow and did what with it?”
    Jessie knuckled her eyes. What was the matter with him?
    â€œI tossed it aside.”
    â€œTossed it where?” the Taugus police chief persisted.
    â€œToward the foot of the crib.”
    The tieless, unshaven man said, “Would you remember exactly where at the foot of the crib the pillow landed, Miss Sherwood?”
    They were all touched by the heat, that was it, Jessie decided. As if where it landed made any difference!
    â€œOf course not,” she said acidly. “I don’t think I gave it a glance after I threw it aside. My only thought at that time was to try and revive the baby. I didn’t really think back to what I’d seen on the pillow until a long time afterward. Then it came back to me with a rush, and I realized what it meant.”
    â€œSuppose you tell us once more just what you think you saw on that pillow, Miss Sherwood.” The tieless man said again. Had she imagined someone’s saying he was from the State’s Attorney’s office in Bridgeport?
    â€œWhat I think I saw?” Jessie flared. “Are you doubting my word?”
    She glanced at Richard Queen in her anger, to see if he was on their side after all. But he merely stood over her rubbing his gray stub of mustache.
    â€œAnswer the question, please.”
    â€œI know I saw a handprint on the pillow.”
    â€œAn actual, recognizable human handprint?”
    â€œYes! Someone with a dirty hand had placed it on that pillow.”
    â€œWhat kind of