The Roman hat mystery A problem in deduction
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Contents and reading sections
Transcriber’s Notes
Misspelled words have been corrected. These are identified by
♦♠ symbols in the text and are shown immediately below the
paragraph or section in which they appear.
Details and other notes may be found at the end of this text.
THE ROMAN HAT
MYSTERY
_A Problem in Deduction_
_By_
ELLERY QUEEN
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
NEW YORK MCMXXIX
_Copyright, 1929, by_
Frederick A. Stokes Company
_All Rights Reserved_
Published August 15, 1929
Second Printing (before publication) July 2, 1929
Third Printing (before publication) August 8, 1929
Fourth Printing, September 10, 1929
_Printed in the United States of America_
Grateful Acknowledgment
Is Made to
PROFESSOR ALEXANDER GOETTLER
_Chief Toxicologist of the City of New York_
For His Friendly Offices in the
Preparation of This Tale
CONTENTS
PART ONE
PAGE
Foreword vii
CHAPTER
I. In Which Are Introduced a Theatre-Audience and a Corpse 3
II. In Which One Queen Works and Another Queen Watches 12
III. In Which a “Parson” Comes to Grief 29
IV. In Which Many Are Called and Two Are Chosen 47
V. In Which Inspector Queen Conducts Some Legal Conversations ♦56
VI. In Which the District Attorney Turns Biographer 79
VII. The Queens Take Stock 90
PART TWO
VIII. In Which the Queens Meet Mr. Field’s Very Best Friend 105
IX. In Which the Mysterious Mr. Michaels Appears 123
X. In Which Mr. Field’s Tophats Begin to Assume Proportions 131
XI. In Which the Past Casts a Shadow 145
XII. In Which the Queens Invade Society 158
XIII. Queen to Queen 174
PART THREE
XIV. In Which the Hat Grows 197
XV. In Which an Accusation Is Made 214
XVI. In Which the Queens Go to the Theatre 226
XVII. In Which More Hats Grow 240
XVIII. Stalemate 261
INTERLUDE
In Which the Reader’s Attention Is Respectfully Requested ♠271
PART FOUR
XIX. In Which Inspector Queen Conducts More Legal
Conversations 275
XX. In Which Mr. Michaels Writes a Letter 286
XXI. In Which Inspector Queen Makes a Capture— 290
XXII. —And Explains 295
♦ “57” replaced with “56”
♠ “270” replaced with “271”
FORWARD
I have been asked by both publisher and author to write a cursory
preface to the story of Monte Field’s murder. Let me say at once that
I am neither a writer nor a criminologist. To make authoritative
remarks, therefore, anent the techniques of crime and crime-fiction is
obviously beyond my capacity. Nevertheless, I have one legitimate claim
to the privilege of introducing this remarkable story, based as it is
upon perhaps the most mystifying crime of the past decade.... If it
were not for me, “The Roman Hat Mystery” would never have reached the
fiction-reading public. I am responsible for its having been brought to
light; and there my pallid connection with it ends.
During the past winter I shook off the dust of New York and went
a-traveling in Europe. In the course of a capricious roving about the
corners of the Continent (a roving induced by that boredom which comes
to every Conrad in quest of his youth)—I found myself one August day in
a tiny Italian mountain-village. How I got there, its location and its
name do not matter; a promise is a promise, even when it is made by a
stockbroker. Dimly I remembered that this toy hamlet perched on the lip
of a sierra harbored two old friends whom I had not seen for two years.
They had come from the seething sidewalks of New York to bask in the
brilliant peace of an Italian countryside—well, perhaps it was as much
curiosity about their regrets as anything else, that prompted me
to intrude upon their solitude.
My reception at the hands of old Richard Queen, keener and grayer than
ever, and of his son Ellery was cordial enough. We had been more than
friends in the old days; perhaps, too, the vinous air of Italy was too
heady a cure for their dust-choked Manhattan memories. In any case,
they seemed profoundly glad to see me. Mrs. Ellery Queen—Ellery was
now the husband of a glorious creature and the startled father of an
infant who resembled his grandfather to an extraordinary degree—was as
gracious as the name she bore. Even Djuna, no longer the scapegrace I
had known, greeted me with every sign of nostalgia.
Despite Ellery’s desperate efforts to make me forget New York and
appreciate the lofty beauties of his local scenery, I had not been in
their tiny villa for many days before a devilish notion took possession
of me and I began to pester poor Ellery to death. I have something of a
reputation for persistence, if no other virtue; so that before I left,
Ellery in despair agreed to compromise. He took me into his library,
locked the door and attacked an old steel filing-cabinet. After a slow
search he managed to bring out what I suspect was under his fingers all
the time. It was a faded manuscript bound Ellery-like in blue legal
paper.
The argument raged. I wished to leave his beloved Italian shores with
the manuscript in my trunk, whereas he insisted that the sheaf of
contention remain hidden in the cabinet. Old Richard was wrenched away
from his desk, where he was writing a treatise for a German magazine on
“American Crime and Methods of Detection,” to settle the affair. Mrs.
Queen held her husband’s arm as he was about to close the incident
with a workmanlike fist; Djuna clucked gravely; and even Ellery, Jr.,
extracted his pudgy hand from his mouth long enough to make a comment
in the gurgle-language of his kind.
The upshot of it all was that “The Roman Hat Mystery” went back to the
States in my luggage. Not unconditionally, however—Ellery is a peculiar
man. I was forced solemnly and by all I held dear to swear that the
identities of my friends and of the important characters concerned
in the story be veiled by pseudonyms; and that, on pain of instant
annihilation, their names be permanently withheld from the reading
public.
Consequently “Richard Queen” and “Ellery Queen” are not the true names
of those gentlemen. Ellery himself made the selections; and I might
add at once that his choices were deliberately contrived to baffle the
reader who might endeavor to ferret the truth from some apparent clue
of anagram.
“The Roman Hat Mystery” is based on records actually to be found in
the police archives of New York City. Ellery and his father, as usual,
worked hand-in-hand on the case. During this period in his career
Ellery was a detective-story writer of no mean reputation. Adhering
to the aphorism that truth is often stranger than fiction, it was his
custom to make notes of interesting investigations for possible use in
his murder tales. The affair of the Hat so fascinated him that he kept
unusually exhaustive notes, at his leisure coordinating the whole into
fiction form, intending to publish it. Immediately after, however, he
was plunged into another investigation which left him scant opportunity
for business; and when this last case was successfully closed, Ellery’s
father, the Inspector, consummated a lifelong ambition by retiring and
moving to Italy, bag and baggage. Ellery, who had in this affair[1]
found the lady of his heart, was animated by a painful desire to do
something “big” in letters; Italy sounded idyllic to him; he married
with his father’s blessing and the three of them, accompanied by
Djuna, went off to their new European home. The manuscript was utterly
forgotten until I rescued it.
[1] “The Mimic Murders.” This crime in its fiction form has not yet
reached the public. J. J. McC.
On one point, before I close this painfully unhandsome preface, I
should like to make myself clear.
I have always found it extremely difficult to explain to strangers the
peculiar affinity which bound Richard to Ellery Queen, as I must call
them. For one thing, they are persons of by no means uncomplicated
natures. Richard Queen, sprucely middle-aged after thirty-two years’
service in the city police, earned his Inspector’s chevrons not so
much through diligence as by an extraordinary grasp of the technique
of criminal investigation. It was said, for example, at the time of
his brilliant detectival efforts during the now-ancient Barnaby-Ross
murder-case,[2] that “Richard Queen by this feat firmly establishes his
fame beside such masters of crime-detection as Tamaka Hiero, Brillon
the Frenchman, Kris Oliver, Renaud, and James Redix the Younger.”[3]
[2] Ellery Queen made his bow as his father’s unofficial counsel during
this investigation.
[3] Chicago Press, January 16, 191-.
Queen, with his habitual shyness toward newspaper eulogy, was the first
to scoff at this extravagant statement; although Ellery maintains
that for many years the old man secretly preserved a clipping of the
story. However that may be—and I like to think of Richard Queen in
terms of human personality, despite the efforts of imaginative
journalists to make a legend of him—I cannot emphasize too strongly the
fact that he was heavily dependent upon his son’s wit for success in
many of his professional achievements.
This is not a matter of public knowledge. Some mementoes of their
careers are still reverently preserved by friends: the small bachelor
establishment maintained during their American residence on West 87th
Street, and now a semi-private museum of curios collected during their
productive years; the really excellent portrait of father and son, done
by Thiraud and hanging in the art-gallery of an anonymous millionaire;
Richard’s precious snuff-box, the Florentine antique which he had picked
up at an auction and which he thereafter held dearer than rubies, only
to succumb to the blandishments of a charming old lady whose name he
cleared of slander; Ellery’s enormous collection of books on violence,
perhaps as complete as any in the world, which he regretfully discarded
when the Queens left for Italy; and, of course, the many as yet
unpublished documents containing records of cases solved by the Queens
and now stored away from prying eyes in the City’s police archives.
But the things of the heart—the spiritual bonds between father and
son—have until this time remained secret from all except a few favored
intimates, among whom I was fortunate enough to be numbered. The old
man, perhaps the most famous executive of the Detective Division in the
last half-century, overshadowing in public renown, it is to be feared,
even those gentlemen who sat briefly in the Police Commissioner’s