of chairs before the table sat Sergeant Thomas Velie and William
Crouther, chief of the store's detective force, talking in undertones;
scowling Salvatore Fiorelli, of the Narcotic Squad, bright black
eyes snapping at some inexpressible thought, his scar pulsing slowly
beneath the swarthy skin; "Jimmy," the little bald-headed operative of
the Headquarters fingerprint department. At the anteroom door stood
Patrolman Bush, relegated to the important post of guardian of the
door. A cloud of detectives, among them Inspector Queen's favorite
operatives--Hagstrom, Flint, Ritter, Johnson, and Piggott--massed along
the wall directly opposite the conference table. At each corner of the
room stood a silent officer in blue, cap in hand.
Neither Inspector Queen nor Ellery Queen had yet put in his appearance.
People whispered this information to each other. They looked sidelong
at the anteroom door, against which Bush's broad back was set.
Gradually, tangibly, another silence came over the scene.
Whispers trembled, wavered, ceased. Glances became more furtive,
chair-twistings more frequent. Cyrus French coughed violently;
he doubled up in agony. Dr. Stuart's eyes flickered with a vague
anxiety. Weaver bent far to the side when the old man's paroxysm had
passed; Marion looked startled; soon their heads were close together,
touching....
Crouther scraped his hand over his face. "What the hell is holdin' up
the works, Sergeant?" Velie shook his head gloomily. "What's it all
about?"
"Got me."
Crouther shrugged.
The silence thickened. Every one grew still as stone.... The silence
grew more embarrassing with each passing moment--a silence that
swelled, breathed, became alive....
Then Sergeant Velie did a strange thing. His spatulate forefinger,
resting on his knee, tapped three distinct times, in rhythm. Not even
Crouther caught the signal, and Crouther was at Velie's side. But
the officer on guard, who had been watching the Sergeant's hand for
minutes, immediately sprang into motion. All eyes flashed instantly
upon him, grasping at this sign of life, of happening with a pitiful
eagerness.... The policeman went to the desk, which was shrouded by a
light tarpaulin, and bending far over carefully removed the covering.
He stepped back, folded the tarpaulin neatly, retreated to his
corner....
But he was already forgotten. As if the sheer rays of a searchlight
had been trained upon the desk, every one in the room eyed the objects
revealed with a fascination drawn from the deepest crevices of his
being.
They were many, and heterogeneous. Ranged in orderly rows along the
glass top, each with a small labeled card before it, were the gold
lipstick marked _W.M.F._, which Ellery had found on the bedroom
dressing-table; the silver-chased lipstick with the _C_ monogram from
the dead woman's bag in the exhibition-window; six keys with gold
discs--the keys to the apartment, five of which bore the initials
of Cyrus French, Winifred Marchbanks French, Marion French, Bernice
Carmody, Westley Weaver, and the sixth the word Master; the two
carved onyx book-ends, lying with a small jar of white powder and a
camel's-hair brush between them; the five strange volumes which Ellery
had found on French's desk; the shaving-set from the lavatory cabinet;
two ashtrays filled with cigaret-stubs--one set much shorter in length
than the other; the gauzy scarf initialed _M.F._, taken from the neck
of the victim; a board on which were tacked the cards from the cardroom
table, laid out exactly as they had first appeared to the police; the
slip of blue memorandum paper which was checked off at Cyrus French's
typewritten name; the blue hat and the walking shoes from the bedroom
closet which Hortense Underhill and Doris Keaton had identified as
having been worn by Bernice Carmody the day she disappeared; and a
black .38 Colt revolver, with the two now rusty-looking splatters of
metal which had been the lethal bullets lying near the muzzle.
Quite by itself, prominently in view of the audience, lay a pair of
dull, steely manacles--a symbol and a portent of what was to come....
And there they reposed, the silent clues garnered during the
investigation frankly open to the gaze of the uneasy guests of Ellery
Queen. Again they stared, whispered.
But this time they had not long to wait. A slight commotion in the
corridor outside became plainly audible in the library. Sergeant Velie
lumbered to his feet and went quickly to the anteroom door, motioning
Patrolman Bush aside. He disappeared, the door swinging shut behind him.
Now the door became the focal point of those half-angry, bewildered
eyes--that door behind which the deep murmur of several voices kept up
a short mysterious litany.... And as if it had been cut cleanly by a
knife, the voices broke off and an instant of silence fell before the
knob of the door was rattled, the door was pushed inward, and eight men
stepped into the room.
38
THE END OF ALL THINGS
It had been Ellery Queen's hand on the knob--a subtly changed young man
with drawn features and a sharpened glance that swept the room once and
then returned to the anteroom.
"Before me, Commissioner," he murmured, holding the door wide.
Commissioner Scott Welles grunted, pushed his heavy body into view.
Three tight-lipped men in plain clothes--his bodyguard--flanked him as
he crossed the room toward the desk.
Next to appear in full sight of the assembled company was a strangely
altered Inspector Richard Queen, holding himself rigidly erect. He was
pale. He followed the police commissioner in silence.
After Queen came District Attorney Henry Sampson and his assistant, the
red-haired Timothy Cronin. They were whispering to each other, paying
no attention to the occupants of the room.
Velie, making up the rear, carefully closed the anteroom door, flipped
Bush back to his post with a curt finger, and dropped into his chair
beside Crouther. The store detective looked up at him inquiringly;
Velie said nothing and settled his big body. Both men turned to watch
the newcomers.
There was a little flurry of conversation as Ellery Queen and his
companions stood near the desk at the head of the room. Inspector Queen
indicated one of the leather-padded conference chairs immediately to
the right and a little behind the desk, as the seat to be occupied by
the Commissioner. Welles seemed a sadder and wiser man--he sat down
without a word, his eyes on Ellery's quiet figure before the desk.
The three guards disposed themselves with the other detectives at the
side of the room.
Inspector Queen himself sat down in a big chair to the left of the
desk, with Cronin at his side. The District Attorney dropped into a
chair next to the Commissioner. Desk in the center, its varied articles
beckoning attention. On either side two chairs with official occupants.
And dominating the scene....
The stage was set.
Ellery Queen, cynically examining the room and its occupants once
more, expressed himself as satisfied at the Commissioner's brusque
question. Ellery stepped behind the desk and stood with his back to
the dormer-windows. His head was lowered, his eyes on the desk-top.
His hand strayed to the glass, hovered over the book-ends, played with
the jar of white powder.... He smiled, straightened, raised his head,
removed his pince-nez glasses, looked calmly at his hushed audience,
waited.... Not until there was absolute silence did he speak.
"Ladies and gentleman." Prosy beginning! Yet something vaguely eerie
shivered through the air; it was a simultaneous sigh from many breasts.
"Ladies and gentlemen. Sixty hours ago Mrs. Winifred French was shot to
death in this building. Forty-eight hours ago her body was found. This
morning we have assembled at a private Waterloo to name her murderer."
Ellery had spoken quietly; now he paused for the slightest instant....
But after that sigh _en masse_ even breaths seemed to be drawn with
care. No one spoke; no one whispered. They merely sat and waited.
A cutting edge slipped into the tone of Ellery's voice. "Very well!
A few preliminary explanations are required. Commissioner Welles--"
he turned slightly toward Welles, "it is with your permission that I
conduct this unofficial inquest?"
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 night-watchman, 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 lips 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 over-whelming 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 night-watchman'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."