Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

He sat at one of the back tables in Le Grenouille, his lamb-in-a-mushroom-and-wine-sauce untouched, his Bordeaux unsipped, and his parboiled new potatoes tested only twice. He was an unlikely sleuth. A miserable sleuth. Yet compelled. Desperate for his brother’s exoneration. Anthony Brooks, the Fuller family lawyer, Barbara Gatt’s defense attorney, sat across from him in his usual pinstripes, nibbling an endive-and-olive salad.

“He’s made the same confession to me,” said Brooks, looking up with dark eyes from under the dome of his bald head.

“And do you think it’s true?” asked Neil, unable to hide his apprehension.

Brooks stopped nibbling and considered the question. He put his fork down, dabbed his small bloodless lips with his linen napkin, and stared at his wine, as if hoping to divine from its ruby depths an answer he could decode.

“I’m puzzled,” he said. “We have the blood, the footprints, the gash on Barbara’s hand. We have her daughter’s retrograde amnesia. We have the discord, the acrimonious divorce, and Paul’s latest custody appeal. We even have Paul attempting to kidnap his own daughter.”

This blueprint for murder encouraged Neil. With so much to push Barbara towards that knife, could there be any doubt of her guilt? Why was Brooks so puzzled? Brooks rolled a black olive with his fork, looked underneath it as if he expected to find something there, and put it back in the exact same spot.

“Paul can be exasperating,” said Neil.

“Yes, but exasperating enough to murder?”

“Paul can be infuriating,” offered Neil.

Brooks looked up, his eyes focusing as if through cross hairs. “Can he?” he asked.

“He expects to be obeyed.”

“And he takes what he wants?” suggested Brooks.

Neil nodded. “I’m afraid he does.”

“So he hoists the girl over his shoulder, and Barbara resorts to murder. A sober, university-educated woman with no history of violence, no criminal record, a steward of five years’ standing with the local Pentecostal, a corporate VP who makes dozens of clear cool-headed decisions every day, and she resorts to murder? And not just the murder of anybody, but the murder of her husband, a man she has loved and respected for the last fifteen years? Just because he’s exasperating?”

He was, of course, her defense attorney.

On behalf of Craig, Neil felt compelled to damn Barbara any way he could. “You forget the element of her unfortunate liaison with my brother,” he said. He took a distracted sip of his wine, hoping to rehabilitate his usual craving for lamb. “One iniquity might lead to another. I can’t see Craig lifting a hand against anybody.”

“No, of course not,” Brooks said quickly, as if to placate Neil. “Craig’s not the type. But I find he tried too hard with his confession. I think he might be hoping to protect Barbara with his confession. Or at least attempting to confuse me with it.”

This notion, that Craig might be trying to protect Barbara with his confession, tempted Neil. Yet Craig wasn’t a particularly adroit dissimulator, always told the truth, always spoke honestly, had never fashioned, so far as Neil could recall, the larger falsehoods necessary for something like his dogged and over-rehearsed confession.

“Someone killed Paul,” said Neil, as if that, in itself, were enough to exonerate Craig.

“Barbara’s never confessed,” said Brooks, as if that, in itself, were enough to exonerate Barbara.

“Yes, but Barbara’s a mother,” insisted Neil. “She had to protect her child.”

Wasn’t that motive enough? Might they not consider the unequivocal instinct of a mother, how that instinct might blind a sober, savvy, university-educated woman, how it might let loose the savage impulses that could ultimately lead to a quick grab for the Wiltshire Staysharp?

He conveyed this theory in a jumble of awkward phrases to Brooks, caught himself stuttering a number of times, the old impediment coming back with disquieting suddenness, the bane of his schoolboy years.

“A mother’s instinct,” mused Brooks, drumming his fingers against the linen tablecloth, still looking doubtful.

“But does that explain the strength?”

Neil pondered this new theme. Strength? Yes, of course, strength.

“Barbara’s small, isn’t she?” said Brooks.

“A flyweight,” agreed Neil.

Brooks lifted his butter knife and positioned the serrated edge upward. “Ever heard of a Turkish thrust?” he asked.

A Turkish bath, Turkish delight, and Turkish tobacco, but never a Turkish thrust. “Enlighten me,” he said.

“In a knife fight, the blade is positioned thus,” he said, demonstrating with his butter knife. “You plunge the knife point underhanded into your victim’s abdomen and yank the blade upward, toward his heart. In this case, the stab wounds in Mr. Gatt’s back suggest such a thrust. You have to be strong to make it work. Especially through the back.”

He saw Brooks’s point. “And Barbara isn’t that strong,” he admitted.

A waiter walked by with a dish full of sugared plums and candied figs.

“Have you seen your brother’s backhand lately?” asked Brooks.