Halfway House (33 page)

“Then how?” cried Pollinger.

“How? There was one means by which the murderer could have learned which was so plain I couldn’t ignore it. While it’s impossible by pure logic to eliminate beyond doubt the murderer’s
accidental
discovery of Gimball’s dual-life background, we can discard the unlikely accident-theory for a positive indication, which clearly exists. Gimball was slain very shortly after he decided to make a clean breast of his predicament and tell the story of his double life to representatives of both his families. When you consider that his first step along the road to confession was to change his insurance-policy beneficiary from his false wife Jessica to his true wife Lucy, the fact becomes too overwhelming to be coincidence. Don’t you see?
At last there was a record of his double life
—nine records, so to speak: the name and address of the new beneficiary on the original application and on the eight revised policies! And then, on the heels of these records, he was murdered. How could I doubt that it was by this means that the murderer had learned that Gimball was Wilson and Wilson Gimball? Anyone who learned of this change, or had access to the policies, could have investigated; learned the secret from the name and address; followed Gimball on one of his stopovers at Halfway House; and in two weeks discovered all that was necessary to plan the murder and implicate Lucy as the murderess.”

Lucy was crying softly; Andrea sat up and put her arm around the weeping woman. At the spectacle Bill began to smile rather fatuously, like a proud parent watching the antics of his two children.

“And so,” said Ellery, “I now had a complete portrait of the criminal. I’ll give the characteristics numerically.

“1. The criminal was a man.

“2. The criminal was a smoker, probably a pipe-smoker, certainly heavily addicted to the weed, for only one chronically in the grip of tobacco would have resorted to it on the scene of an intended crime while waiting for his victim.

“3. At the time of the murder the criminal carried a monogrammed or similarly identifiable match-packet.

“4. The criminal had motive against both Gimball and Mrs. Wilson.

“5. The criminal had no writing implement on his person, or the one he did have he preferred not to use because its use might in some way be traceable to him.

“6. The criminal came most probably from the Gimball side of the fence—his deliberate framing of Lucy implied that.

“7. The criminal had a tender feeling for Andrea, indicated by the mildness of his attacks despite great provocation. The criminal had an even tenderer feeling for Andrea’s mother, for he didn’t once attempt to carry out his threat to harm her—an attempt which, had it been made even as a feint, would have very effectually sealed Andrea’s mouth forever.

“8. The blow which killed Gimball, said the coroner, was delivered with a right hand. So the criminal used his right hand.

“9. The criminal knew that Gimball had changed the beneficiary of his policy.”

Ellery smiled. “In mathematics, you know, you can do a lot of tricks with the number nine. Now let me show you a little trick I was able to do in a murder-case with the same number. With nine definite characteristics of the murderer, the analysis became child’s-play. All I had to do was to go through my list of suspects and test each one against the nine characteristics.”

“Fascinating,” beamed Judge Menander. “Do you mean to say that by this method you can reach a definite conclusion?”

“By this method,” retorted Ellery, “I can eliminate every suspect but one. I’ll discuss them one by one.

“In the first place, of course, point number one eliminates in a single swoop all women. The criminal had to be a man. Who are the men? Well, old Jasper Borden first…”

“Oh!” gasped Andrea. “You horrid thing! Do you mean to say that you suspected Grandfather for a
single
instant?”

Ellery grinned. “My dear child, everyone is suspect in an objective analysis; we can’t afford to be sentimental because one person is old and decrepit and another young and beautiful. As I say, Jasper Borden. Well, you say, he’s an invalid; he never leaves his house; this was the crime of an active man; and all that is quite true. But let’s pretend that this is a detective story where Mr. Borden would probably have been shamming and slipping out of his Park Avenue apartment quite spryly at ungodly hours and doing all sorts of dreadful things under cover of the night. How do we stand, logically speaking, on Jasper Borden? Well, he is eliminated on point two completely: he does not smoke any more, as he told me before a witness—his grim nurse, who certainly was in a position to deny this if it hadn’t been true. Besides, since this isn’t a detective story, we know that Mr. Borden is a semi-paralytic and could not possibly have committed the crime.”

“Next, Bill Angell.”

Bill half rose from the sofa. “Why, you damned Judas!” he grinned. “You don’t mean to tell me you actually considered me a possibility?”

“Of course I did,” said Ellery calmly. “What did I know about you, Bill? I hadn’t seen you for over ten years—you might have become a hardened criminal in the interval, you know. But seriously, you were eliminated on several counts: points four, five, and six. That is, while you might have had motive against Gimball, you certainly had no motive against Lucy, your own sister, whom the criminal framed. Five, the criminal had no usable writing implement on his person. Ah! but
you
did!”

“How on earth,” said Bill, astonished, “do you know that?”

“You gullible people,” sighed Ellery. “By the simplest method in the world—I saw them. Remember? I even mentioned in our little chat in the taproom of the Stacy-Trent that,
from the pocketful of nicely sharpened pencils I saw
, you must be a busy man. Well, that was only a matter of minutes after the crime. If you had a pocketful of pencils and were the criminal, you would certainly have used one in writing the note to Andrea. Pencils, with all our science, are untraceable. And point six, the criminal came from the Gimball side of the fence. Obviously you didn’t. So you were eliminated logically.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Bill feebly.

“Now, our pompous friend Senator Frueh. But what have we? An amazing thing! Senator Frueh, I find to my astonishment, fits all the characteristics! I mean, conceivably. But in his case alone one fact is sufficient to eliminate him which doesn’t even appear on the list of characteristics, although I might have included it, at that. He wears a beard. Nothing phony about that brush! It’s been his pride and joy for years; it has decorated newspapers for a generation. But no man with a beard as long as his—it reaches to his chest, remember—could possibly have concealed it, even with a veil. There was one witness who saw the veiled ‘woman’ quite clearly: the garageman. He could not have avoided noticing a beard if the ‘woman’ wore one. The veil didn’t reach below the chin; the beard would have shown. Besides, the ‘woman’, said the witness, was husky and large; Frueh is short and fat. And even if Frueh had shaved off his beard for the crime, he exhibited one afterward. Was it false? Most improbable, with all the worrying he does to it. If there’s still any doubt in your mind, the next time you see it just pull it.

“Now friend Burke Jones. Eliminated at once on point eight. There could have been no chicanery in the report that he had suffered a broken arm in a game of polo—it was reported in the papers and obviously had been witnessed by hundreds of people. But it was Jones’s right arm that was broken. The criminal delivered the lethal blow with his right arm. Jones couldn’t physically, therefore, have committed the crime.

“The portrait was complete,” said Ellery quietly, “and so was the process of elimination. I had painted the picture of only one person, who fitted
all nine characteristics
so perfectly that there could be no doubt whatever.
That person, of course, was Grosvenor Finch
.”

There was a long interlude, during which the only sound was Lucy’s tired and curiously happy sobbing.

“Remarkable,” said Judge Menander again, clearing his throat.

“Not at all. Sheer common sense. How did Finch fit?

“1. He was a man.

“2. He was addicted to smoking, and a pipe at that; the day I visited his office his secretary, Miss Zachary, offered me some of his personal pipe-tobacco, blended for him by a famous tobacconist. Now only a hopelessly incorrigible pipe-smoker goes to the length of having his tobacco specially blended for him.

“3. He possessed match-packets even more distinctive than logic had indicated! For his secretary that same day, when I approved vocally of Finch’s tobacco, promised to have the tobacconist Finch patronized send me some—with, she took the liberty of adding, Finch’s compliments! The tobacconist, Pierre of Fifth Avenue, eventually delivered a pound; and with it came a box of match-packets
with my name printed on each one!
Pierre was even kind enough to add in his note that
this was his usual custom
. If he sent match-packets with all deliveries of tobacco to his customers, and mine had come with my name printed on the covers of the packets,
and
this was Pierre’s usual procedure, then obviously Finch possessed numerous match-packets with
his
name on them! Not a monogram, not an insignia, but his name in full. No wonder he was worried. No wonder he snatched that empty packet away. He had every reason to believe that Andrea had seen the name
Grosvenor Finch
on its cover.”

“Good Lord,” exclaimed Pollinger; he threw up his hands.

“4. The criminal had motive against both Gimball and Mrs. Wilson. This followed as a result of the criminal’s learning about Gimball’s double life, which I shall come to in a moment. But, knowing this, it is clear that anyone from the Gimball side of the fence would have reason to wish the death of Gimball, the author of Jessica’s shame, and might seek to revenge himself on Lucy, the living symbol of Gimball’s double life. And Finch was very close to Jessica.

“5. The writing implement? Curious note. The same day I visited Finch’s office he offered me a cheque as a retainer for investigating the crime for the National Life. Before my eyes he wrote on that cheque with a fountain-pen I saw him take from his pocket. When he showed me the cheque the only thing in script was his signature
written in green ink
. Green ink! Distinctive; not at all usual. He could not afford to take the chance of writing the note on the scene of the crime in that ink. So, he had to use other means. Unquestionably, he had the pen with him. Now that he’s dead, we shall never know the exact truth about how he was dressed that night, but the probabilities are that he rolled his trousers up and slipped a woman’s dress over himself as he was, fully dressed. The coat he put on would conceal the neckline. That’s how he came to have matches and his pipe with him—they must have been in the pocket of the male clothing beneath the feminine outer attire.

“6. Certainly he came from the Gimball side of the fence. He had known both the Gimball and Borden families intimately for years.

“7. That he had a tender feeling for Andrea is unquestionable—we’ve had repeated evidences of it from his actions. As for Andrea’s mother, well, there are no specific facts to base the opinion on, but his solicitude for her, his constant attendance on her since Gimball’s death, were clear enough implications of a fondness that may have been even more.”

“That’s true, I think,” said Andrea in a low voice. “I’m sure he—he was in love with her. From ’way back. He was a bachelor, of course. Mother’s often told me that he never married because she married my father—my real father, Richard Paine Monstelle. And when father died and mother married Joe…”

“Love for your mother was the only plausible reason I could ascribe to Finch as the murderer of your stepfather, Andrea. Discovering that Gimball had betrayed your mother into an illegal marriage, that he was spending most of his time with another woman in another city, that his own sacrifice had been in vain, Finch decided to kill your mother’s betrayer.

“8. The criminal was right-handed, or at least used his right hand in striking the lethal blow. This was rather indeterminate in adapting Finch to the complete portrait, but in the light of the overwhelming evidence of the other eight points, it was unimportant. At least it was possible for Finch to have used his right hand.

“9. The last point and in many ways the most important. That Finch knew of the change of beneficiary of the million-dollar policy. The point was simply resolved. Who knew of this change of beneficiary? Two persons. One was Gimball himself. But Gimball had told no one; I’ve been over that ground already. The other was Finch. Finch, and Finch alone of the possible murderers, had known of the beneficiary change before the crime.”

Ellery smoked thoughtfully. “You know, this last point wasn’t all plain sailing. It presented certain difficulties of theory. Access to the application and the policies was the only way in which someone could have discovered the clue to Gimball’s double life. But from the time of the change until Gimball deposited the sealed envelope with Bill, only the insurance companies involved had access to the policies. We can eliminate the insurance-company employees who performed the clerical work involved on the ground of sheer improbability. But we cannot eliminate Finch, who on his own confession was aware of the change, having been notified by his company in his capacity as personal ‘broker’ for Gimball that an application for change-of-beneficiary had been received.

“The problem that naturally arises is: Despite Finch’s protestations to the contrary, did he really tell someone else of the change of beneficiary, thus placing another person in possession of the vital clue? I will ignore the fact that Finch, in insisting that he did not, made the most damaging statement possible under the circumstances, since he was virtually naming himself, and himself alone, as the sole possessor of the vital knowledge. Had he been conscious of the implications, he certainly would have managed to tell someone else, just to spread the possibilities of guilt.

“But even if you choose not to believe him, whom could he theoretically have told? A woman? Mrs. Gimball—the then Mrs. Gimball, for example? But as a woman she is eliminated from suspicion; the criminal was a man. Had she told another woman in turn, this other woman would be eliminated for the same reason. Had she told another man, or had Finch told another man directly, then we merely have to see if that man, or any man involved in the case, fits the characteristics of the criminal as we have now developed them. Well, what happens? There is no man except Finch who fits those characteristics completely. So, by a circuitous route, we arrive at the conclusion that Finch told no one; or if he did, his telling had no bearing on the murder as it subsequently developed.