Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

“This afternoon,” she answered listlessly. “Michael drove me back to the apartment and we found Conrad asleep on the sofa. After Michael left a little before two I fixed Conrad a light lunch. Then he said he had to go out for a while. That was the last time I saw him.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

She shook her head. “He often went out without telling me where, especially if he needed drugs from his supplier.”

“Who’s that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope your memory improves, Miss Beatty.”

“It was someone across town. His address is in the apartment. I insisted Conrad give it to me in case I got desperate some day when he wasn’t home. Now are you going to let me see him?”

“First I want you to go over the contents of his pockets.” Segar dumped a plastic evidence bag on the desk in front of him. There was German and Romanian currency, gripped by a golden clip, a leather wallet with some papers, a few coins, a handkerchief, some unidentified capsules, and a six-inch spring knife with the initials J. M. on it.

“That’s Jarie Miawa’s missing knife,” Michael observed.

“Looks like it.”

“He... he took it off Jarie’s body,” Jennifer said. “He went through his pockets before the police arrived, looking for drugs.”

“These are deadly things.” Segar demonstrated by pressing a button on the side of the knife. The spring-powered blade shot out one end.

Michael was more interested in the wallet. He looked through its contents, found an apartment key, some routine identification cards, and a folded slip of paper with a number on it.

“117,” Michael read.

“The building where we had our drug parties,” Jennifer said.

“Where Jarie Miawa died,” Segar added.

Michael frowned at it. “The building was right across the street from his own apartment. Why would he need to write down its number?”

“Maybe to give to someone,” Segar speculated. He took out a second evidence bag. “Here are his watch and rings. A battery-powered wristwatch with the correct time. No clue there to when he died.”

“I saw that in his room.” Michael picked up two fancy rings. “What about these, Jennifer? Was he wearing them both when he left you?”

“Yes. I gave him the sapphire.” She seemed close to tears again.

Segar was starting to gather up the objects when the phone on his desk rang. He picked it up and listened intently. “Fine,” he said. “All right.” He hung up and turned to Michael. “The autopsy shows he died within a short time of eating, probably around two o’clock.”

“It was after two when he left the apartment!” Jennifer insisted.

“He must have crossed the street to number 117 and been stabbed to death in the basement almost at once,” Michael said. He was remembering meeting Zorica, Sigmund’s wife, on that street.

The phone rang again and this time it was one of Segar’s men, reporting that a search of the connecting basements in the block had yielded nothing unusual.

“Can I see him now?” Jennifer asked again.

Michael tried putting an arm around her shoulders. “What good will it do? It’ll only make you feel the loss all the more.”

She shook off his comforting arm. “I want to see him! It’s my right!”

Michael and Segar exchanged glances over her head. “All right,” the captain said. “Come this way.”

“Life might be better for you now,” Michael tried to tell her as they went downstairs. “You can get into a treatment program and stop your dependence on drugs.”

“It’s not just the drugs, it’s not even Conrad, really. It’s just that this is another ending. My life has been too full of endings. When I fled into the mountains to your Gypsy village it was an ending, and when I left Zurich it was another ending. By now I’ve run out of endings.”

“Here we are,” Segar said, holding open a white door with a No Admission sign. The attendant pulled out one of the drawers and lifted the sheet.

Jennifer froze, staring at Conrad’s chalk-white face, thinking thoughts that Michael couldn’t imagine. Yes, it was another ending for her. There was no denying that.

A low moan started then deep in her throat, building toward a fearful culmination. Michael, standing across the open drawer from her, tried to move, then shouted, “Segar! The knife!”

It was tight against her chest, just beneath the breastbone, and she had only to press the button for the spring release. They both saw the spurt of blood as the blade went in, and even as Segar grabbed her Michael knew it was too late.

In all the years that he’d known Captain Segar, he’d never seen anything hit him as hard as Jennifer Beatty’s death. He sat in his office chair, his face almost as ashen as Conrad’s had been. “How could I have done it, Michael? When I was distracted by those phone calls she must have slipped the knife up her sleeve or into her blouse. I never even noticed!”

“Neither of us noticed. She didn’t want us to. She decided she wanted to die like that. Perhaps she was thinking of Juliet stabbing herself and falling on Romeo’s body.”