Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 26, No. 4. Whole No. 143, October 1955

“Are you mad? You have no business sense. You have no taste. You are just beautiful — and sweet. Listen. She said I want the furniture by Imperatori — some name like that. She had a little clipping about him from the Times last April. I pretended to know all about him. We can’t have her order direct.”

“So? I, having no business judgment and no taste, will run down to the public library and read the New York Times for the month of April last year. I have sharp eyes.”

“That is simple. Wait, it is simpler than that. I cannot remember the name — maybe it was nothing like Imperatori. But the date was April 10.”

“Hah! I can remember that,” Magda said. “That was when Walter sailed for Europe. I will find it, darling, never fear.”

And she did. But not before she had found another item, a strange and disturbing item, also small and hidden in the back pages. It was datelined Baltimore, April 10, and it said in its entirety: “Miss Elsie Snider, of this city, jumped or fell from her room on the fifteenth floor of the Lord Baltimore Hotel sometime during the night. Her body was found this morning lodged on the grating over the hotel dining room and was identified by her mother, Mrs. William Snider, of 1209 Grove Street, West Baltimore.”

Walking back through Forty-Second Street and up Madison Avenue, the two news items carefully copied and in her handbag, she decided that she was being childish. And yet. And yet...

“Did you get it?” Martha Webster asked.

“What, darling? Oh, yes. I got it. Shall I write or cable him?”

“I will do it. You look more out-of-the-worldish than usual.”

Magda went through the rest of the day in a haze. She couldn’t erase it from her mind. Miss Elsie Snider — Elsie — the fifteenth floor of the Lord Baltimore Hotel. Coincidence? Of course it was coincidence! The other Elsie — Elsie Brand — had jumped or fallen years ago. He had said he had been lonely for years. Probably the fifteenth floor was the highest in the hotel. Suicides did that, didn’t they? She didn’t know much about suicides, but the chills kept running up and down her back. She could remember how he looked when he told her, sad and courageous, blaming himself. She could taste the deviled crabmeat she had been eating when he told her. The fifteenth floor of the Lord Baltimore Hotel. Deviled crab was a specialty of Baltimore, wasn’t it? And she remembered the ringed date, April 3, the first day of the week in which she had been transformed and which had ended on the tenth when Walter sailed for Europe — the very same day Elsie Snider had been found. She stood up suddenly. “I am behafing like a Hungarian!” she said aloud.

Martha Webster surveyed her thoughtfully. “Yes, I should say you are.”

“I vill show it to heem now.”

“Do so, darling, by all means, whatever it is.”

She flung on her furs, picked up her handbag, and rang the down elevator-button with a flourish. Afraid of a shadow! Was she a woman or a mouse? Resolutely, she marched into 507 Madison Avenue, bowed curtly to the clerks, and opened her husband’s office door without knocking.

“Valter!” she said — and with the single word her resolution vanished.

“Yes?” he said without rising. His eyes, she thought, are cold as ice.

“A man,” she said. “He iss annoying me. Outside he stands vaiting.”

He was on his feet like a cat and picking up a sword cane. “Where is he? Show him to me!”

“He iss no longer dere. He muss be frighten avay.” How easy it was to lie when one was frightened.

Walter appraised her shrewdly. “What did he do?”

“He spoke and ven I deed not answer, he grabbed my coat, like dis, and try to pull me to heem.”

“Curious,” he said. “You have been badly frightened — but not by a tough at this hour on Madison Avenue. It is the first time you have lied to me.”

It changed their relationship. Walter was suddenly wary and the mask of tenderness was dropped except in public. He was relieved. It had not suited him. He ordered evening gowns for her that were so décolleté that to some they seemed indecent. What he had wanted was possession and the envy of that possession. These things he had, and so was satisfied.

And what of Magda? Magda had been shocked. What wife would not have been? But shock tempers a strong character. She submitted to what had become his cruelty and wore the daring gowns with dignity. No one would have known of her unhappiness but she was determined in one thing. She was going to find out about Elsie. She thought of telephoning Mrs. William Snider. That would be simple but somehow unsatisfactory. In the end she waited until she felt strong enough and then acted directly. It only took her a little over two hours by plane and taxi to reach 1209 Grove Street, West Baltimore. It was a red brick house like so many others in that peaceful city. The door was opened by a little white-haired woman.

“Mrs. Snider?” Magda asked.

“Yes.”

It was hard to do but she had steeled herself. “I am calling about the accident to your daughter a year ago today.”