French Powder Mystery (35 page)

“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 all the next morning.

“Logically, then, the question followed: Why did the murderer desire to delay the discovery of the body? Think it over and you will see that there can be only one convincing reason—because he had to do something on Tuesday morning which the discovery of the body would have rendered dangerous or even impossible!”

They were hanging on his words now breathlessly.

“How could this be?” asked Ellery, his eyes sparkling. “Let’s shift to a new tack for the moment. … No matter how the murderer entered the store, he must have stayed all night. He had three ways to enter, but no way to get out unobserved. He could have hidden in the store during the day; he could have come in after hours by the Employees’ Entrance; or he could have slipped into the building by the freight-door at eleven o’clock at night while the commissary truck was unloading the food supplies for the next day. The chances were that this last was the method used, for O’Flaherty had seen no one enter by his door, and coming in at eleven at night was better for the murderer’s purpose than having to stay in the store from five-thirty until midnight.

“But how to get out? O’Flaherty reports no one left by his door; all other exits were locked and bolted; and the freight-door on 39th Street was closed at eleven-thirty, fifteen minutes before Mrs. French even arrived at the store and a half-hour before she was murdered. So the criminal had no recourse but to stay in the store all night. Then he could not escape until nine the next morning, when the doors were opened to the public. At that time he could walk out of the store as if he were an early customer.

“But here another factor entered. If he could walk out of the store at nine, a free man, why couldn’t he also attend to whatever business he had without the rigmarole of taking the body to the window in order to secure a delay? The point is that he
did
transfer the body. Then he
couldn’t
walk out of the store at nine, a free man. He
needed
that delay. He had
to stay in the store even after nine!”

Simultaneously there came a short gasp from different quarters of the room. Ellery looked around quickly, as if anxious to determine exactly who had been shocked into astonishment and perhaps fear.

“I see that several of you catch the inference on the wing,” he said, smiling. “There could be only one reason to explain why our murderer had to stay in the store even after nine—and that is that
he was connected with the store!”

This time incredulity, suspicion, dread were written on all those plastic faces. Every one drew unconsciously away from his neighbor, as if suddenly aware of the many persons which this last indictment might implicate.

“Yes, that is where we arrived finally,” continued Ellery in an unemotional voice. “If our mysterious criminal were an employee of the store or connected with the store in some official or even unofficial capacity, his absence on the discovery of a murder would certainly be noted. He could not afford to have his absence, which was evidently of paramount importance, noted. He was in a difficult position. The memorandum note”—he exhibited the blue slip on the desk before him—“left on this desk by Mr. Weaver overnight told the murderer that both Mr. Weaver and Mr. French would be in the apartment at nine o’clock the next morning. If he left the body in the apartment, the murder would be discovered at nine, the hue and cry raised, and he would never get his chance to slip out of the store and attend to his secret business. And even telephone calls might be watched. So he had to make sure the body was not discovered until he had time to slip away, or even telephone (for this would be untraceable if there was no reason to check calls). The only method which he knew would surely delay the discovery of the body was to hide it in the window-room. Which he did, and quite successfully.

“By this time we were able to clear up finally that minor point of how the murderer entered the building. We had the Monday time-chart. Our murderer must be, we said, an employee of the store or in some way connected with it. Yet the time-chart showed that every one had checked out regularly before or at five-thirty. Then the murderer must have entered the building by the freight-door, as the only means left.

“One other point, while we are on the subject of the murderer’s desire to delay the discovery of the body. …It occurred to me, as no doubt it has occurred to you, that our mysterious criminal ran uncommon risks and embarked on numerous voyages of complication when he began to clean up the mess after his crime. For example—that he carried the body downstairs. But that is explained by the fact that he had to have time in the morning to attend to this vague business, an item, incidentally, which we have not as yet explained. Also—why did he go to the trouble of securing a new felt, carefully mopping up the blood, and so on? Again this is answered by the need for time in the morning, and the fact that if a bloody book-end were found by Mr. Weaver, let us say, at nine o’clock a crime would be suspected at once and undoubtedly the criminal’s chance of getting his business done would be seriously jeopardized. Evidently then, what he had to do was of the most pressing importance—so pressing that he could not run the risk of the crime’s even being suspected before that business was attended to. …”

Ellery paused and referred to a sheaf of paper which he took from his breast-pocket. “We must leave for the moment our general conclusion that the person we are seeking is connected officially or semi-officially with this establishment,” he said at last. “Please bear that statement in mind while I veer off into another lane of speculation entirely. …

“I brought to your attention a few moments ago four concrete evidences of the presence of Miss Bernice Carmody in this apartment on Monday night. These were, in the order in which we found them, the game of banque exclusively indulged in by Miss Carmody and her mother; the
La Duchesse
cigarets, violet-scented, known to be Miss Carmody’s special brand; Miss Carmody’s hat, which she was observed wearing on Monday afternoon when she disappeared from sight; and her shoes, which fit the same description.

“Now I shall show you that, far from proving that Miss Carmody was present here on Monday night, they prove exactly the contrary,” continued Ellery briskly. “The banque game contributes nothing to our little refutation; the cards lay there in a legitimate array, and we must leave them for the present.

“The cigarets, however, present a more illuminating view of my contention. These”—he held up one of the ashtrays on the exhibit-table—“these cigaret stubs were found on the table in the cardroom.” He lifted one of the stubs from the tray and held it high. “As you can see, this cigaret has been almost entirely consumed—in fact, only the small strip which bears the brand imprint is left. Without exception, each of the ten or twelve cigarets in this ashtray have been uniformly smoked to the same tiny stub.

“On the other hand, in Miss Carmody’s bedroom at the French house, we found these stubs.” He exhibited the second ashtray, picking out one of the cigarets from its cluttered, dusty depths to show to his audience. “You will observe that in the case of this stub, the cigaret, also a
La Duchesse
of course, has been little more than one-quarter consumed—Miss Carmody evidently having taken only five or six puffs before crushing the remainder in the tray. Every stub in this tray from Miss Carmody’s bedroom has been similarly treated.

“In other words,” he said with a bare smile, “we find the amusing phenomenon of two sets of cigarets, both presumably smoked by the same person, exhibiting distinctly opposite physical remains. On investigating, we discovered that Miss Carmody, for reasons soon to be clarified, is extremely nervous—so much so that none of those persons who know her best can recall any occasion on which she has not smoked her favorite cigarets in exactly this wasteful, convulsive manner.