The Player on the Other Side by Ellery Queen

taking up too much of your time. You’ve been to York Square, Miss Sullivan?’
    â€˜Goodness, yes. Often.’
    â€˜Just in Miss Emily York’s house?’
    â€˜Oh, no, I’ve been asked to dinner, one time or another, in all but Percival York’s. Chiefly at Emily’s, of course. Many’s the time the two of us have worked through the night on plans for the village.’ Miss Sullivan said suddenly, ‘You think we’re both impossible dreamers, don’t you, Inspector?’
    â€˜Oh, no,’ he said. Was it possible?
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ she retorted. ‘Well, perhaps we are. I remember Emily used to dream of turning the four castles into one neighborhood-house type of community. But that was impossible, she said, because her share of the estate simply wouldn’t be enough to buy the others out. You see, the village upstate is planned for just men. But with York Square we could have a headquarters building and three houses for women — one a residence club, say, another a clinic, the third a school. It would be nice,’ she said wistfully.
    â€˜How about now?’ the Inspector asked, and despised himself. ‘I mean now that Emily’s share is going to be a million or so larger?’ She looked at him, and he said, ‘There I go prying again, right?’
    She gasped with laughter again. ‘Yes, bless you. But that’s not a very nice thought, Inspector, is it?’
    He thought: You can bet your lavender sachet it’s not a very nice thought. But very not-nice thoughts are why I’m here. And he found himself wondering how old was the controversy over the end and the means. Did a perplexing whiff of it pass through the massive skull of some prehuman homunculus the day he hurled his brother into the jaws of a saber-tooth so that he himself might escape?
    In this particular balance, lonely on one pan of the scales, stood Myra and Percival York — Myra a mental and physical invalid, Percival unlovable and unmournable; and on the other pan huddled a street swarm of human wreckage — to be reborn, to be grown whole again and (to the Inspector, above all) to be taken off the streets and out of the cluttered courtrooms. For possibly the first time in his life Inspector Richard Queen, the old hound dog of Centre Street, sniffed at the idea of being just a little blind, just a fraction forgetful, just a tiny bit obscure … It was this damned Sullivan woman!
    The Inspector shook himself almost visibly, aware of her soft song-voice. ‘Beg pardon?’
    â€˜Are you all right, Inspector?’ she asked — was asking — anxiously. ‘Oh, dear, I’ve made you angry.’
    â€˜Not at all,’ he said gallantly, and grinned. ‘You couldn’t.
    â€˜You looked so very stern suddenly.’
    â€˜I was thinking of how Robert York died,’ said the Inspector, and told himself aloud with hushed force, ‘I don’t like murder, no matter why it’s done.’ And felt much better for having said it.
    â€˜Poor Emily,’ murmured Miss Sullivan.
    â€˜Would you say she’s taking Robert’s death hard?’
    â€˜Oh, she is. Dreadfully.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t have said so.’
    â€˜Because you don’t know her, Inspector. Dear Emily is very controlled. Threats or violence’ — surprisingly, Miss Sullivan chuckled — ‘are things she simply will not allow . Time and again I’ve seen her stand up to rampaging drunks, raving addicts, the worst hoodlums. She’ll walk right into danger without a thing showing, though I’m sure she’s as afraid as anyone else. She’s the same way about grief, I suppose.’
    â€˜Very controlled,’ the Inspector repeated thoughtfully.
    â€˜Take yesterday, for example. She just worked a bit harder, that was all. You wouldn’t have realized anything was disturbing her unless you knew the signs. Like her