The French Powder Mystery, page 27
Welles nodded once.
“Then let me explain,” continued Ellery, turning back to his auditors, “that I am merely taking the place of Inspector Queen, who is unable to take charge because of a minor throat ailment which makes long speaking difficult and painful. Correct, sir?” He bowed very solemnly in the direction of his father. The Inspector grew even paler than before, nodded wordlessly. “Further,” Ellery went on, “if I shall at any time use the personal ‘I’ in my discourse this morning, you are to understand that it is merely for convenience—that in reality I shall be describing the investigatory processes of Inspector Queen himself.”
He halted abruptly, threw a challenging glance about the room, met nothing but wide eyes and ears, and plunged at once into an analysis of the French murder case.
“I shall take you through our investigation of this crime, ladies and gentlemen,” he began in a sharp decisive tone, “step by step, deduction by deduction, observation by observation, until I arrive at what is an inevitable conclusion, Hagstrom, you are taking this down?”
Eyes followed the direction of Ellery’s glance. At the side of the room where the detectives were congregated, Detective Hagstrom was seated, pencil poised above a stenographic notebook. Hagstrom bobbed his head.
“What transpires here this morning,” explained Ellery pleasantly, “will become part of the official dossier of the case. Enough of asides!” He cleared his throat.
“Mrs. Winifred Marchbanks French was discovered dead—killed by two bullets, one in the heart and one in the precordial region below the heart—on Tuesday at fifteen minutes or so past noon. When Inspector Queen arrived upon the scene he noted several facts which led him to believe that”—he paused—”the exhibition-window on the main floor was not in effect the place where the crime was committed.”
The room was deathly still. Fascination, fear, aversion, grief—the gamut of emotions played upon those intent white faces. Ellery Queen went on, rapidly.
“There were five component elements in this initial investigation,” he said, “that pointed to the conclusion that the murder was not committed in the window.
“The first was the fact that, while on Monday night Mrs. French had in her possession her personal key to this apartment, the key was missing from her person and effects Tuesday morning, on the discovery of her dead body. O’Flaherty, the head nightwatchman, testified that she had the key at eleven-fifty Monday night when she left his cubbyhole to take the elevator upstairs. Yet it was gone. Search of the store and premises left the key still unfound. What was the inference? That the key and the crime were in some way connected. How? Well, the key appertained to the apartment. If it was missing, wasn’t there an indication that the apartment also entered into the crime somewhere? At least there was enough suspicion to be gleaned from the missing key to warrant a belief that the apartment might have been the scene of the crime.”
Ellery paused; his lips twitched with fleeting amusement at the frowning faces before him.
“Captious reasoning? I see the disbelief on your faces. Yet bear it in mind. The fact of the key’s being missing meant nothing of itself—but when it was added to the four other facts of which I shall speak, it took on significance indeed.”
He swung back into his main narrative.
“The second element was a grotesque and even amusing one—you will see, incidentally, that the detection of crime is not built upon weighty salient factors, but upon just such incongruities as I shall have occasion to mention this morning . . . . I refer to the fact that the crime must have been committed a short time after midnight. This was simply calculated from Dr. Prouty’s report—Dr. Prouty is the Assistant Medical Examiner—that Mrs. French had been dead some twelve hours when she was found.
“If Mrs. French had been shot to death in the window-room at a little past midnight, ladies and gentlemen,” continued Ellery, with a twinkle in his eye, “her murderer must have committed his crime either in total darkness or by the feeble illumination of a pocket-torch! For there were no lighting fixtures that worked in the room—in fact, no bulbs—and the room was not even wired. Yet we were forced to suppose that the murderer met his victim, talked with her, perhaps quarreled with her, then shot her unerringly in two vital spots, disposed of her body in the wall-bed, cleaned up the blood-stains and what not—all in a room at best illuminated by a flashlight! No, it was not reasonable. Wherefore Inspector Queen, quite logically, I believe, concluded that the crime was not committed in the exhibition-window.”
There was a little rustle of excitement. Ellery smiled, continued.
“This, however, was not the only reason for his belief. There was a third point. And that was the lipstick—the long, silver-chased lipstick—monogrammed C, found in Mrs. French’s handbag by her body. That this lipstick obviously was not Mrs. French’s I shall not discuss at this point. The pertinent factor was that it contained lip-rouge of a decidedly darker shade of red than the lip-rouge on the dead woman’s lips. But this meant that Mrs. French’s own lipstick—with which she daubed the lighter rouge on her lips—should be somewhere about. But it was not! Where could it be? Perhaps the murderer took it? That sounded rather nonsensical. The most plausible explanation seemed to be that the missing lipstick was somewhere else in the building . . . . Why somewhere else in the building?—why not at Mrs. French’s home, or at least outside the store?
“For this very good reason. That Mrs. French’s lips—her dead mute lips—which were painted with the lighter shade of red, indicated that she had not completed her application of the rouge! There were two dabs on either side of her upper lip, and another small dab in the center of her lower lip. The rouge had not been smeared—it had patently been applied with a finger and left that way . . . .” Ellery turned toward Marion French. He said gently, “How do you apply your lip-rouge, Miss French?”
The girl whispered: “Just as you described, Mr. Queen. Three pats, one on each side of the upper lip and one in the center of the lower lip.”
“Thank you.” Ellery smiled. “We had, then, visible evidence of a case where a woman began to paint her hps and did not complete the operation. But this was unnatural, remarkable. There are very few things that will keep a woman from finishing this delicate task. Very, very few! One of them might be a violent interruption of some kind. A violent interruption? But there was murder committed! Was that the interruption?”
He changed his tone, forged ahead. “It seemed likely. But in any case, those lips had not been painted in the window-room. Where was the lipstick? That we found it later in the apartment was merely confirmation . . . .
“Point number four was physiological. Dr. Prouty was puzzled by the fact that there was so little blood on the corpse. Both wounds—one particularly—should have bled considerably. The precordial region contains many blood vessels and muscles which would have been badly torn by the passage of the bullet, which left a ragged wound. Where was the blood? Had the murderer cleaned it up? But in the dark, or semi-darkness, he could not possibly have removed all traces of the copious blood-flow from those wounds. Whereupon we were compelled once more to conclude that that blood had flowed—somewhere else. Which meant that Mrs. French had been shot somewhere else than in the window-room.
“And the fifth point was a psychological one which I fear”—he smiled sadly—”would not carry much weight in a court of law. Nevertheless to me it was quite overwhelming in its indication. For the mind rebelled at the thought that the window-room was the scene of the crime. It was preposterous, dangerous, asinine from the point of view of a potential murderer. A meeting and a murder connote secrecy, privacy—any number of exact requirements. The window-room afforded none of these. The room is not fifty feet away from the head nightwatchman’s office. That area is well-patrolled at periodic intervals. Revolver-shots had to be fired-—and none was heard. No! Both Inspector Queen and myself felt—for the five reasons I have given you, no single one of which was conclusive, but which were collectively significant—that the crime was not committed in the window-room.”
Ellery paused. His audience was following the story with eager, panting concentration. Commissioner Welles regarded Ellery with a new light in his small eyes. The Inspector was sunk deeply in thought.
“If not the window,” continued Ellery, “where then? The key pointed to the apartment—the required privacy, illumination, a logical place for the use of lipstick—certainly the apartment seemed the best possibility. So Inspector Queen, relying upon my discretion and discernment, since he himself could not leave the window-room where the preliminary investigation was still going on, asked me to go to the apartment and see what I could see. Which I did, with interesting results . . . .
“The first thing I found in the apartment was Mrs. French’s own lipstick, lying on the bedroom dressing-table.” Ellery picked up the gold lipstick from the desk and held It up for a moment. “This lipstick proved at once, of course, that Mrs. French had been in the apartment on Monday night. The fact that it was lying under the curved edge of a mother-of-pearl tray on the dressing-table and was quite hidden, showed that it had probably been overlooked by the murderer. In fact, the murderer had no reason even to look for it, because he did not apparently observe that the lipstick in Mrs. French’s bag and the coloring on her lips were not identical.” Ellery replaced the glittering metal case on the desk.
“Now, I found the lipstick on the dressing-table. What did this mean? It seemed rather plain that Mrs. French had been using the stick at that dressing-table inside when she was interrupted. But the fact that the lipstick was still there on the table when I found it pointed, it seemed to me, to the fact that Mrs. French was not shot in the bedroom. What was the interruption, then? Obviously, either a knock on the outer door or the noise of the murderer entering the apartment. It was not the latter, for the murderer had no key to the apartment, as I shall soon prove. Then it must have been a knock at the door. Then, too, Mrs. French must have been expecting it, for it so disturbed her, or it was so important to her, that she immediately put down her lipstick, neglecting to complete the daubing of her lips, and hurried through the library and into the anteroom to admit her nocturnal visitor. Presumably she opened the door, the visitor entered, and they went into the library where Mrs. French stood behind the desk and the visitor stood to the right, facing her—that is, Mrs. French stood where I am standing now and the murderer stood about where Detective Hagstrom is sitting at this moment.
“How do I know this?” went on Ellery rapidly. “Very simply. On examining the library, I discovered that these book-ends, which lay on the desk”—he lifted the two onyx book-ends carefully and exhibited them—”had been tampered with. The green felt sheathing of one of them was lighter in shade than its mate. Mr. Weaver volunteered the information that the book-ends were only two months old, having been presented to Mr. French by Mr. Gray on the occasion of Mr. French’s last birthday, and that he had observed them at that time in perfect condition, with the felts exactly alike in color. Furthermore, the book-ends had never left the room, or in fact the desk itself. Apparently, then, the change of felt had occurred the night before. And that was proved when, on examining the felt under a powerful glass, I noted some scattered grains of a white powder stuck in the glue-line where felt and onyx met!
“The glue was still a trifle viscid,” said Ellery, “showing that it had been very recently applied. The grains, on examination, by myself cursorily and on analysis by the official fingerprint expert, proved to be ordinary fingerprint powder, such as is used by the police. But the use of fingerprint powder predicated a crime. There were no fingerprints on the onyx. That meant the fingerprints had been removed. Why the powder, then? Obviously, first to sprinkle the surface in order to bring out what fingerprints might be there, and second to remove the ones found. So much was evident.
“But the larger question arose—why were these book-ends handled, at all?” Ellery smiled. “It was an important question, and its answer told an important story. Well, we now knew that they were handled in order to change the felt on one of them. But why had that felt been changed?”
His eyes challenged them mischievously. “There was only one logical answer. To hide or remove a trace of the crime. But what could such a trace be—one that would necessitate carefully ripping off a whole felt, running down to some department in the store which stocks felts and baizes (with what risk you may imagine!), bringing back the felt and some glue, and finally pasting the new protector on the book-end? It must be a damaging trace indeed. The most damaging trace of a crime which I can conceive is—blood. And that was the answer.
“For Dr. Prouty had stated positively that much blood had flowed. Then I had found the exact spot where Mrs. French’s heart-blood had poured out of her body! I proceeded to reconstruct that incident. The book-ends were on the far edge of the desk, opposite the place where I am now standing. The blood must have come, then, from a position similar to mine at this moment, if we suppose that Mrs. French had been shot as she stood here, the first bullet striking above the abdomen in the precordial region, then the blood spurted out directly on the glass top of the desk and trickled across to the book-end, soaking it in gore. Whereupon she must have collapsed in the chair, falling forward just as the second bullet, fired from the same spot, hit her directly in the heart. This also bled a little. Only one book-end was affected—the one nearer the center of the table. It was so bloody that the murderer was compelled to remove the felt altogether and substitute a new one. Why he felt compelled to hide this trace of the crime I shall go into later. As for the different shade of the new felt—it is an optical fact that colors are more difficult to distinguish truly by artificial light than by daylight. At night, no doubt, the two shades of green seemed identical. With the aid of the sun I immediately detected the difference . . . .
“You see now how we concluded exactly where Mrs. French was when she was murdered. As for the position of her assailant, it was determined from the angle of the wounds themselves, which were pointing to the left and quite ragged, indicating that the murderer stood rather sharply to the right.”
Ellery paused, patting his lips with a handkerchief. “I have strayed a little from the main line of my exposition,” he said, “because it was necessary to convince you that I now had genuine proof that the murder had been committed in the apartment. Until the discovery of the tampered book-ends I could not be sure, despite the fact that I found these cards and cigaret stubs”—he displayed them briefly—”in the cardroom next door.”
He put down the board on which the cards were tacked. “We found the cards lying on the table there arranged in such a manner as to indicate immediately that a game of Russian banque had been interrupted. Mr. Weaver testified that the cardroom had been tidy the evening before, that the cards had not been there. That meant, of course, that someone had used them during the night. Mr. Weaver further attested to the fact that of all the French family and their friends and acquaintances, Mrs. French and her daughter Bernice Carmody were the only ones addicted to the game of banque—that in fact it was well known in many quarters how passionately devoted to it they were.
“The cigaret stubs in the ashtray on the table bore the brand-name La Duchesse—again identified by Mr. Weaver as Miss Carmody’s brand. It was scented with her favorite odeur, violet.
“It seemed, then, that Mrs. French and Miss Carmody had both been in the apartment Monday night, that Miss Carmody had smoked her usual cigarets, and that they had played a game of their beloved banque.
“In the bedroom closet we found a hat and a pair of shoes identified by Miss Underhill, the French housekeeper, and Miss Keaton, a maid in the French employ, as having been worn by Miss Carmody on Monday, the day of the murder, when she left the house and was not seen again. Another hat and another pair of shoes were missing from the closet, seeming to indicate that the girl had changed the damp ones she was wearing for the dry ones that were missing.
“So much for that.” Ellery paused and looked about him, eyes glittering strangely. There was not the slightest sound from his audience. They seemed mesmerized, intent only on watching the slowly rising structure of damning evidence.
“To make an all-important point . . . Now that I knew that the apartment was the scene of the crime, the question inevitably arose: Why was the body removed to the window downstairs? What purpose did it serve? For it must have served some purpose—we saw too many signs of cunning, coordinated scheming to believe that the murderer was an arrant lunatic, doing things for no reason at all.
“The first alternative was that the body was removed to make it appear that the apartment was not the scene of the murder. But this did not follow from the facts, for if the murderer wished to remove all traces of the crime from the apartment, why did he not also remove the banque game, the cigaret stubs, the shoes and the hat? True, if the body were not discovered or the murder not suspected, the finding of these articles would indicate no crime. But the murderer could not hope to conceal the body forever. Some day, somehow, it would be found, the apartment gone over, and the cards, cigarets and other things would point to the apartment as the place where the murder was committed.
“So, it was evident that the body was removed for another reason entirely. What could that be? The answer came after thought—to delay the discovery of the body. How was this arrived at? Simple mental arithmetic. The exhibition was held every single day at noon sharp. This was an unvarying rule. The window was not entered until noon. These facts were common knowledge. If the body were hidden in that wall-bed the murderer had absolute assurance that it would not be discovered before twelve-fifteen. There was the good sharp reason ready made for us—the only gleam of light in the whole muddle, which was complicated by such questions as why the window was used at all when it had so many obvious disadvantages, and so on. So we had no doubt that the murderer took the trouble of carrying the body down six flights of stairs and into the exhibition-room because he knew that the body would not be found ail the next morning.
