French Powder Mystery (36 page)

“What is the inference?” A perceptible pause. “Merely that Miss Carmody did
not
smoke the cigarets we found on the cardroom table; that they were smoked or prepared by someone else who did not know Miss Carmody’s unvarying method of throwing away cigarets one-quarter consumed. …

“Now, as for the shoes and hat,” Ellery said without allowing his auditors time in which to digest this latest pronouncement, “we found further signs of a tampering hand. The appearance of things is that Miss Carmody was here Monday night, having been wet by the rain of the afternoon and evening, and that before leaving the apartment she changed her soaked hat and shoes, putting on others from the small stock of her clothing already in the bedroom closet.
But
we discover that the hat had been inserted in a hat-box with its brim to the bottom. And that the shoes had been stuck into the shoe-bag with their heels projecting from the pocket.

“In testing the habituary nature of such a procedure, we considered that an overwhelming percentage of women put their hats away in hat-boxes with the crowns
to the bottom
and the brims to the top; also that when shoes have large buckles, as this pair has, they are put away with the heels inside, so that the buckles will not catch on the material of the bag. Yet both articles denoted this peculiar ignorance of feminine custom. Here the inference is also obvious—Miss Carmody did not put away those shoes and the hat;
a man did.
For it is the masculine custom to put hats away with the brim downward; and a man would not grasp the significance of the buckle. All the shoes in the rack had the heels showing, because none happened to have buckles; whoever put Miss Carmody’s shoes in the rack automatically followed suit, which a woman would not have done.

“Now these points, taken by and of themselves, are, I will confess, rather weak and inconclusive. But when you put the three together, the evidence is too strong to be overlooked—it was not Miss Carmody who smoked the cigarets and put away shoes and hat, but someone else—a man.”

Ellery cleared away a huskiness in his throat. His tone was barbed with earnestness, despite a growing hoarseness. “There is another item of considerable interest in this last connection,” he continued. “In examining the lavatory inside, Mr. Weaver and I ran across an intriguing theft. A safety-razor blade of Mr. Weaver’s, which he had used after five-thirty Monday afternoon and had cleaned and restored to the case because it was his last blade and he knew he would have to shave in the morning—this blade, I say, was missing on Tuesday morning. Mr. Weaver, who was busy Monday night and consequently forgot to put in a new supply of blades, came to the apartment Tuesday morning early—at eight-thirty, in fact, because he had to clear up some business and reports before the arrival of Mr. French at nine. He intended to shave in the apartment. The blade, which he had put away only the late afternoon before, was gone. Mr. French, let me explain does not keep a razor, never shaving himself.

“Now why was the blade gone? Of course, it was plain that the blade must have been used Monday night or early Tuesday morning before Mr. Weaver arrived here. Who could have used it? One of two people—Mrs. French or her murderer. Mrs. French could have used it as a cutting instrument of some sort; or her murderer could have used it.

“Of the two alternatives, surely the second is more tenable. Remember that the criminal was constrained by circumstances to pass the night in the store. Where could he stay with most safety? Certainly in the apartment itself! He could not roam about the dark floors, or even hide among them with as great a margin of safety as in the apartment—not with the watchmen prowling about all night! Now—we find a blade used. It suggests normally the process of shaving. Well, why not? We know that the murderer had to make an appearance in the morning as an employee or official of the store. Why shouldn’t he shave while he was temporarily occupying the apartment? It predicates a cold-blooded personality, but that is an argument for rather than an argument against it. Why is the blade missing? Evidently something happened to it. What could have happened to it? Did it break? Why not! The blade had been used a few times; it was brittle. A little extra force in screwing the parts of the razor together, and the blade might easily have snapped. Let us suppose that this happened. Why didn’t the murderer merely leave the broken blade? Because the murderer is a canny scoundrel and in his own way an excellent psychologist. If a broken blade remains it is more likely to be recalled that it was
not
broken at a former date than to take it for granted that the blade
was
broken at that former date. If the blade is missing there is no incentive to suspicion or memory. An altered object is a more vigorous mental stimulant than a missing one. At least, that is what I should have thought if I had been in the murderer’s place; and in effect I believe the person who planned this affair did the correct thing in taking away the blade—correct according to his lights. The proof is that Mr. Weaver thought little or nothing of the missing blade until I probed it out of him; and then it was only because I brought to the investigation an unprejudiced, impersonal observation.”

Ellery grinned a little. “I have been working on presumptions and more or less feeble deductions, as you can see; yet if you put together all the scattered, flimsy facts which I have outlined in the past ten minutes, I think you will see that common sense simply cries out that the blade was used for shaving, that it was broken, and that it was taken away. We find no evidence that the blade might have been used for anything but its legitimate purpose; and this only strengthens the contention. Let me leave this line of thought temporarily and go to another, altogether different, and in its way one of the most significant in the entire investigation.”

There was a surreptitious rustling of bodies in hard chairs, a quick intake of breath. The eyes on Ellery did not waver.

“It may come to you,” he said in a quiet, merciless voice, “that more than one person could have been implicated in this affair; that, perhaps, if Miss Carmody did not put away her shoes and hat—disregarding the damning evidence of the cigarets—she still might have been present; for another—a man—could have disposed of the shoes and hat while she stood by or did something else. I shall disprove that with the most gratifying expedition.”

He put his palms flat on the desk, leaned slightly forward. “Who, ladies and gentlemen, had rightful access to this apartment? Answer: The five possessors of the keys. That is—Mr. French, Mrs. French, Miss Carmody, Miss Marion French, and Mr. Weaver. The master key in O’Flaherty’s desk was closely guarded, and no one could have got it without either his knowledge or the knowledge of the day man, O’Shane. And no such knowledge exists, which makes it plain that the master key in no way enters our calculations.

“Of the six keys
in esse,
as it were, we are now able to account for five. Mrs. French’s is missing. All the others are absolutely accounted for as having been exclusively in the possession of their owners. Mrs. French’s key has been sought for by the combined cunning of the detective force. It is still missing. In other words, it is not on these premises, despite the fact that O’Flaherty positively avers that Mrs. French had it in her possession when she entered the store Monday night.

“I told you at the beginning of this impromptu demonstration that the murderer probably took that key. Now I tell you not only that he took it, but that
he had to take it.

“We have one confirmation in fact that the criminal
wanted
a key. On Monday afternoon, some time after Miss Carmody left the French house furtively, Miss Underhill, the housekeeper, received a telephone call. The caller claimed to be Miss Carmody. The caller asked Miss Underhill to have Miss Carmody’s key to the apartment ready, that a messenger would be sent for it at once. Yet only the very same morning, Miss Carmody had told Miss Underhill that she had lost her key, she thought, and asked Miss Underhill to secure one of the other keys and make a duplicate for her!

“Miss Underhill doubts that the caller was Miss Carmody. She is ready to swear that someone stood by the telephone at the other end and prompted the caller’s reply when Miss Underhill reminded the caller about the lost key and the morning instructions. The caller then hung up in some confusion. …

“What is the inference? Surely that the caller was not Miss Carmody, but a hireling or accomplice of the murderer, who prompted the call in order to secure a key to the apartment!”

Ellery drew a long breath. “I leave you for the moment to your own cogitations on the interesting inflections this incident raises. … Now let me conduct you through a logical maze to another conclusion—the one with which I began this branch of my thesis.

“Why did the murderer want a key? Obviously, to secure a means of access to the apartment. He could not get in except through the agency of a second person who possessed a key, if he had not one himself. Presumably he expected to be admitted to the apartment by Mrs. French, but in the careful planning of the crime the possession of a key for himself might conceivably be important, and this explains the call and the projected ‘messenger.’ But to the case in point!

“The criminal killed Mrs. French in the apartment. Now that he had a corpse and knew that he must take it down into the window-room, for the various reasons I have given, he pulled up with a sudden thought. He knew that the door to the apartment had a spring lock that snapped shut. He had no key, having failed in his effort to get hold of Bernice Carmody’s. He must carry the body out of the apartment. Yet he had much to do in the apartment afterward—clean up the evidences of blood, ‘plant’ the shoes and hat, the banque game and cigarets. As a matter of fact, even if he cleaned up the room and ‘planted’ the false evidence before he took the body down, he still needed means of reëntry into the apartment. He had to pussyfoot through the store for the felt, the glue, and other paraphernalia needed to fix the book-ends. How was he to get back into the apartment? He also meant to sleep in the apartment, apparently—again, how was he to get back? You see, whether he took the body downstairs before or after he cleaned up, he still needed a means of reëntry to the apartment. …

“His first thought must have been to insert something between the door and the floor to keep the springed door from clicking shut. But what about the watchmen? He must have thought: ‘The watchmen make rounds through this corridor by the hour. They will be sure to notice a partly open door and investigate.’ No, the door had to be closed. But—a thought! Mrs. French had a key, her own key—the one by which she herself entered the apartment. He would use that. We can picture him opening her bag while she lay, bleeding and dead, across the desk, finding the key, putting it into his own pocket, picking up the corpse and leaving the apartment, now certain of a means of reëntering it when he was through with his grisly task.

“But”
—and Ellery smiled grimly—“he had to bring the key back upstairs with him, obviously, to get into the apartment again. Therefore we didn’t find it on the body. True, he might have gone upstairs, done his cleaning up, and then taken the key downstairs again. But—of course that’s inane—how would be get back again? Besides, the danger he would encounter—taking still another chance of being detected on the main floor getting into the window. … It was dangerous enough the first time, but that was inescapable. No, he probably figured that the best thing he could do would be to pocket the key and dispose of it when he left the building in the morning. True, he might have left it in the apartment, on the card-table for example. But the fact that it isn’t in the apartment shows that he took it away with him—he had two alternatives and chose one of them.

“We find then—” Ellery paused for the merest instant—“that our criminal committed the murder
without accomplices.

“I see doubt on some faces. But surely it is quite clear. If he had an accomplice, he wouldn’t have been forced to take the key at all! … He would have carried the body downstairs, and his accomplice would have remained in the apartment to open the door for him when he was finished downstairs. Don’t you see? The very fact that he had to take the key shows that it was a one-man job. I might be confronted with the objection: ‘Well, it could have been two people at that, because both might have carried the body downstairs.’ To that I reply with certainty, ‘No!’ because it would have involved a double risk—two people would have been easier to detect by a watchman than one. This crime is well thought out—the author of it would never have taken this unnecessary chance of discovery.”

Ellery stopped abruptly and stared down at his notes. No one moved. When he looked up there was a tightness about his lips that revealed an inward strain whose cause no one there could guess.

“I have now reached the point, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced in a calm flat voice, “where I can go to some length in describing our elusive criminal. Would you care to hear my description?”

He looked about the room, challenging them with his eyes. Bodies rigid through excitement sagged in reaction. Every one averted his head. There was no sound from them.

“I take it that you would,” said Ellery in the same flat voice, which contained a note of amused menace. “Very well, then!”

He leaned forward, eyes glittering. “Our murderer is a man. The tactics employed in putting the shoes and hat into the closet plus the evidence of the missing blade point to this masculinity. The physical energy required in disposing of the body and the rest; the mental agility, with its recurrent traces of hard common sense; the cold-bloodedness, the unscrupulosity—all these point unerringly to a masculine figure with, if you will, a fairly heavy beard which requires daily shaving.”

They followed the movements of his lips with bated breaths.

“Our man worked alone, without accomplices. The deductions from the missing key, which I have gone into at great length, point to this.”

There was not a tremor of movement in the room.