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

dirt, Miss Sherwood?”
    â€œKind? How should I know?”
    â€œWhat color was it? Black? Brown? Gray?”
    â€œI really couldn’t say. Maybe grayish. Like dust.”
    â€œWell, was it grayish, like dust, or wasn’t it?”
    â€œI think it was.”
    â€œYou think it was?”
    â€œI’m not sure about the color,” Jessie said tiredly. “How can I be? My impression is that it looked like a dust print. I could be wrong about that, but I don’t think I am. That it was dirt of some kind I’m positive.”
    â€œYou say it was as if someone had placed a dirty hand on the pillow,” the tieless man said. “Placed it how, Miss Sherwood? Flat? Doubled up? Partially?”
    â€œPerfectly flat.”
    â€œWhere on the pillow?”
    â€œJust about in the middle.”
    â€œWas it a clear impression? That is, could you tell unmistakably that it was a human handprint?”
    â€œWell, it wasn’t really sharp, as I recall it. Sort of blurry—a little smudged. But it couldn’t be mistaken for anything but what it was. The print of a hand.” Jessie shut her eyes. She could see it with awful clarity. “The print was indented. I mean … there had been pressure exerted. Considerable downward pressure.” She opened her eyes, and something happened to her voice. “I mean someone with a filthy hand had pressed that pillow hard over the baby’s face, and kept pressing till he stopped breathing. That’s why I told Mr. and Mrs. Humffrey that Michael had been murdered. At first, as I say, it didn’t register. I saw it, and my brain must have tucked it away, but I wasn’t conscious of it till later. Then I told them to call the police. Why are you asking me these questions? Why don’t you just examine the pillow and see for yourselves?”
    â€œStand up, Miss Sherwood,” Chief Pearl growled. “Can you stand?”
    â€œOh, I’m all right.” Jessie got to her feet impatiently.
    â€œGo over to the crib. Don’t touch it. Just take a look at the pillow.”
    Jessie was convinced now that it was the treacherous kind of dream where you thought you’d waked up but even that thought was part of the dream. Look at the pillow! Couldn’t they look at it themselves?
    Suddenly she felt a reluctance to go to the crib. That was queer, because she had seen death regularly for many years, in a thousand forms. Jessie had feared death only three times in her life, when her parents died and when she received the telegram from the War Department about Clem. So it was love, perhaps, that made the difference … because it was she who had tended his unhealed navel … because it was on her face that he had kept his bright new eyes fixed with such absolute trust while she fed him.
    Let him not be there, she prayed.
    â€œIt’s all right, Jessie,” Richard Queen’s voice murmured close to her. “The little boy’s been taken away.”
    He knew, God bless him.
    She walked over to the crib blindly. But then she shook her head clear and looked.
    The expensive pillow was at the foot of the crib, one corner doubled over where it lay against the footboard.
    The lace-edged pillowcase was spotless.
    Jessie frowned. “It must have flipped over when I tossed it aside.”
    â€œBorcher, turn it over for Miss Sherwood,” Chief Pearl said.
    The Taugus detective took the lace between thumb and forefinger at one corner and turned the pillow carefully over.
    The other side was spotless, too.
    â€œBut I don’t understand,” Jessie said. “I saw it with my own eyes. I couldn’t possibly have been mistaken.”
    â€œMiss Sherwood.” The voice of the man from the State’s Attorney’s office was unpleasantly polite. “You would have us believe that you had your attention fixed on this pillow for no more than a second or two, in a room illuminated only by a dim