Face to Face by Ellery Queen Page A

millionaire.”
    â€œI know that. Is there anything else about her I ought to know?”
    â€œWell, she and Glory were a tight twosome. They never had the troubles most temperamental artistes have with their managers. Selma couldn’t be a threat to other women, which was one reason; the other was that she’s a real cool operator. What else? Aside from agenting, she keeps pretty much to herself. If she has a life of her own, she hides it under her falsies. She’s a deep one.”
    â€œHow do you mean?”
    â€œDeep. Don’t you understand English?”
    â€œThanks, Kip.”
    â€œWhen am I going to have to thank you, Charlie?”
    They were a little early for the will-reading appointment. William Maloney Wasser turned out to be a large, portly, outwardly calm man with a polka-dot bow tie and a tic. The tic seemed to fascinate Harry Burke.
    â€œNo, I can’t say I knew Glory Guild really well,” the lawyer said as they waited for the funeral party in his office. “My dealings with her were mainly through Selma Pilter—who, by the way, is one of the smartest businesswomen I’ve ever had anything to do with. It was Selma who recommended my firm to Glory when Glory was looking around for somebody to handle her affairs. Selma’s steered a number of her clients my way.”
    â€œThen I take it you haven’t been Glory’s lawyer long?”
    â€œAbout fifteen years.”
    â€œOh. Didn’t she have a lawyer before you?”
    â€œWillis Fenniman, of Fenniman and Gouch. But old Will died, and Glory didn’t like Gouch—she used to say they didn’t make music together.” Wasser seemed more amused than irritated by the interrogation. “Do I understand, Mr. Queen, that I’m being grilled in a murder case?”
    â€œHabit, Mr. Wasser. Forgive me. Besides, you’ve already been looked up. The police department has found you and your firm lily-pure and clean-o.”
    Wasser chuckled, and then his secretary announced the arrival of the funeral party. Before he could instruct her to show the party in, Ellery said hurriedly, “One thing, Mr. Wasser. Does the word ‘face’ have any special meaning for you?”
    The lawyer looked blank. “Is it supposed to?”
    â€œF-a-c-e.”
    â€œYou mean in the context of this case?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    Wasser shook his head.

19
    Carlos Armando ushered Lorette Spanier into the law office with a deference that none of the onlookers could doubt, least of all the girl. It seemed to Ellery that she was half pleased by it, the other half being annoyance. Armando actually took up a post behind her chair. She was the mystery ingredient in his ointment and, as such, had to be fingered with care. Jeanne Temple he ignored. Whether this was out of the contempt of familiarity or the discretion of broad experience Ellery was unable to decide. In any event, it was clearly a bad situation for the secretary of the dead woman. By the side of the busty child-blonde with the pout and the dimple, the Temple girl faded like an overexposed chromo. She was so aware of it that her muddy brown eyes spattered Armando with loathing before her glance lowered to the gloved hands in her lap, where it remained.
    Selma Pilter produced a shock, and a downward revision of Ellery’s estimate of Kip Kipley’s judgment. The old woman’s ugliness approached an esthetic experience, like the ugliness of a Lincoln or a Baroness Blixen. Her fleshless frame was so fine as to suggest hollow bones, like a bird’s; Ellery half expected her to flap her arms and sail to a chair. Her long face narrowed to an almost nonexistent chin; the coarse dark skin was like the bed of an extinct river with the ripple-marks showing. Her nose was a scimitar edge, her lips a multitude of hairline wrinkles, her pendulous lobes further elongated by African earrings of ebony. (Had the elephant-hide chair