Halfway House by Ellery Queen Page B

in a gruff voice, “I want Queen to understand I’m not in favor of this.”
    “Of what?” smiled Ellery.
    “Of this deliberate confusion of motives,” snapped the bearded lawyer. “Finch has an axe to grind for his blasted company; and we’ve another entirely different. I agreed, Finch, as I told you last night, only because Jessica and you insisted. If Jessica took my advice—and Andrea’s—which she won’t, she’d keep strictly out of this stinking tangle.”
    “No,” said Mrs. Gimball in a low voice. “That woman robbed me of everything—my good name, Joe’s love. I’ll fight. I’ve always permitted everyone to step over me—father, Joe, even Andrea. This time I’m going to defend myself.”
    Ellery thought that the woman was stretching the probabilities a little. He could not visualize her as she painted herself. “But there’s very little you can do, Mrs. Gimball,” he said. “There’s no doubt whatever concerning Lucy’s—I mean Mrs. Wilson’s legal status. She was his lawful wife. The fact that she was his wife under an assumed name doesn’t alter the case at all.”
    “I’ve been telling mother that,” murmured Andrea. “It can’t lead to anything but more notoriety. Mother, won’t you please—?”
    Jessica Gimball’s lips compressed. Some strange quality in the undertones of her voice made them silent. “ That woman ,” she said, “ killed Joe .”
    “Oh, I see,” said Ellery gravely. “I see. And on what basis do you make this accusation, Mrs. Gimball?”
    “I know it. I feel it.”
    “I’m afraid,” he replied in dry tones, “that our courts won’t take cognizance of such evidence.”
    “Please, Jessica,” said Grosvenor Finch with a frown. “Look here, Queen. Mrs. Gimball is naturally not herself. Of course hers is no reason at all. But I speak now for the company. The point is that the National Life as such has no personal motive against this woman which might strike anyone as persecutive. It’s interested only in determining the facts.”
    “And since I am also,” drawled Ellery, “presumably an objective agent aiming at the same goal, you want my puny assistance?”
    “Please. Let me finish. Let me state Hathaway’s position; he would have been here to talk to you himself, except that he’s ill. Mrs. Wilson became the beneficiary of one of our policy-holders a matter of mere days before his death by violence. True, he created her his beneficiary himself, but there is no proof that she did not beguile or coerce him into making the change.”
    “Nor proof that she did.”
    “Very true, very true. Nevertheless, the contingency from our standpoint exists. Now, this contract calls for payment of one million dollars to the new beneficiary. There are peculiar contributory circumstances. The new beneficiary was the secret wife of the insured—at least secret from point of view of his real identity. If she suddenly discovered his perfidy, even granting a genuine love for him prior to that discovery, she would be inhuman if her love did not turn to hate. Add the fact that she was his beneficiary to the tune of a million—that’s omitting completely the possibility that her hatred led her to wheedle him into altering his beneficiary—we have a dual motive for murder. Surely you see our position?”
    Senator Frueh stirred restlessly in his chair as he fingered his beard. Ellery said apologetically, “I could make out almost as strong a theory—forgive me—to implicate Mrs. Gimball. Discovering that her husband was married to another woman, that indeed she had never been his legal wife, that moreover he had heaped the last indignity upon her of making this other woman his beneficiary… Voilà. ”
    “But the point is that Mrs. Wilson is the beneficiary and the million does go to her. As I say, in the face of these circumstances, the National would be remiss in its duty to its policyholders if it did not hold up payment of the policy pending an