The Roman hat mystery A problem in deduction
“I might have suspected it,” said Ellery. “Where do I start?”
“You don’t,” grunted his father. “I’m doing the talking to-night and
you’re going to listen. And you might make a few notes, too.
“Let’s begin with Field. I think, in the first place, that we can take
it for granted our friend went to the Roman Theatre Monday night not
for pleasure but for business. Right?”
“No doubt about it in my mind,” said Ellery. “What did Velie
report about Field’s movements Monday?”
“Field got to his office at 9:30—his usual morning arrival-hour. He
worked until noon. He had no personal visitors all day. At twelve
o’clock he lunched at the Webster Club alone, and at 1:30 returned
to his office. He worked steadily until 4:00—and seems to have gone
straight home, as the doorman and elevator-man both testify he arrived
at the apartment about 4:30. Velie could get no further data except
that Michaels arrived at 5:00 and left at 6:00. Field left at 7:30,
dressed as we found him. I have a list of the clients whom he saw
during the day, but it doesn’t tell much.”
“How about the reason for his small bank account?” asked Ellery.
“Just what I figured,” returned Queen. “Field has been losing steadily
on the stock market—and not chicken feed, either. Velie’s just run a
little tip to earth which makes Field out as a frequent visitor to
the racetrack, where he’s also dropped plenty. For a shrewd man, he
certainly was an easy-mark for the wiseacres. Anyway, that explains his
having so little cash in his personal account. And more than that—it
probably also explains more conclusively the item of ‘50,000’ on the
program we found. That meant money, and the money it referred to was
in some way connected, I’m sure, with the person he was to meet at the
theatre.
“Now, I think that we can pretty well conclude that Field knew his
murderer rather intimately. For one thing, he accepted a drink
obviously without suspicion, or at least question; for another,
the meeting seems to have been definitely arranged for purposes of
concealment—why, else, if that is not so, was the theatre chosen for
the meeting at all?”
“All right. Let me ask you the same question,” interposed
Ellery, puckering his lips. “Why _should_ a theatre be chosen as a
meeting-place to transact a secret and undoubtedly nefarious business?
Wouldn’t a park be more secret? Wouldn’t a hotel lobby have its
advantages? Answer that.”
“Unfortunately, my son,” said the Inspector mildly, “Mr. Field could
have had no definite knowledge that he was going to be murdered. As far
as he was concerned, all he was going to do was to take care of his
part of the transaction. As a matter of fact, Field _himself_ might
have chosen the theatre as the place of meeting. Perhaps he wanted to
establish an alibi for something. There’s no way of telling yet just
what he wanted to do. As for the hotel lobby—certainly he would run a
grave risk of being seen. He might have been unwilling, further, to
risk himself in such a lonely place as a park. And, lastly, he may have
had some particular reason for not wanting to be seen in the company of
the second party. Remember—the ticket-stubs we found showed that the
other person did not come into the theatre at the same time as Field.
But this is all fruitless conjecture—”
Ellery smiled in a thoughtful manner, but said nothing. He was thinking
to himself that the old man had not completely satisfied the objection,
and that this was a strange thing in a man of Inspector Queen’s direct
habits of thought....
But Queen was continuing. “Very well. We must always bear in mind
the further possibility that the person with whom Field transacted
his business was _not_ his murderer. Of course, this is merely a
possibility. The crime seems to have been too well planned for that.
But if this _is_ so, then we must look for _two_ people in the audience
Monday night who were directly connected with Field’s death.”
“Morgan?” asked Ellery idly.
The Inspector shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps. Why didn’t he tell
us about it when we spoke to him yesterday afternoon? He confessed
everything else. Well, maybe because he felt that a confession of
having paid blackmail to the murdered man, together with the fact
that he was found in the theatre, would be too damning a bit of
circumstantial evidence.”
“Look at it this way,” said Ellery. “Here we find a man dead who
has written on his program the number ‘50,000,’ obviously referring
to dollars. We know from what both Sampson and Cronin have told us
about Field that he was a man of unscrupulous and probably criminal
character. Further, we know from Morgan that he was also a blackmailer.
I think, therefore, we can deduce safely that he went to the Roman
Theatre on Monday night to collect or arrange for the payment of
$50,000 in blackmail from some person unknown. Right so far?”
“Go ahead,” grunted the Inspector noncommittally.
“Very well,” continued Ellery. “If we conclude that the person
blackmailed that night and the murderer were one and the same, we need
look no farther for a motive. There’s the motive ready made—to choke
off the blackmailing Field. _If_, however, we proceed on the assumption
that the murderer and the person blackmailed were not the same, but two
entirely different individuals, _then_ we must still scrabble about
looking for a motive for the crime. My personal opinion is that this is
unnecessary—that the murderer and the blackmailed person are one. What
do you think?”
“I’m inclined to agree with you, Ellery,” said the Inspector. “I merely
mentioned the other possibility—did not state my own conviction. Let
us proceed, for the time being, then, on the assumption that Field’s
blackmail victim and his murderer were the same....
“Now—I want to clear up the matter of the missing tickets.”
“Ah—the missing tickets,” murmured Ellery. “I was wondering what you
made of that.”
“Don’t be funny, now, you rascal,” growled Queen. “Here’s what I
make of it. All in all, we are dealing with eight seats—one in which
Field sat, for which we have the stub found on Field’s person; one in
which the murderer sat, for which we have the stub found by Flint;
and finally the six empty seats for which tickets were bought, as
established by the box-office report, and for which stubs were not
found, torn or whole, anywhere in the theatre or box-office. First of
all, it is barely possible that all of those six whole tickets were in
the theatre Monday night, and went out of the theatre on somebody’s
person. Remember, the search of individuals was necessarily not so
exhaustive as to include an examination for small things like tickets.
This, however, is highly improbable. The best explanation is that
either Field or his murderer bought all eight tickets at one time,
intending to use two and reserving the other six to insure absolute
privacy during the short time that the business was to be transacted.
In this case, the most sensible thing to have done was to destroy the
tickets as soon as they were bought; which was probably done by either
Field or the murderer, according to who made the arrangements. We must,
therefore, forget those six tickets—they’re gone and we’ll never get
our hands on them.
“To proceed,” continued the Inspector. “We know that Field and his
victim entered the theatre separately. This may positively be deduced
from the fact that when I put the two stubs back to front, the torn
edges did not match. When two people enter together, the tickets are
presented together and are invariably torn together. Now—this does
not say that they did not come in at practically the same time,
because for purposes of safety they may have come in one after the
other, as if they did not know each other. However, Madge O’Connell
claims no one sat in LL30 during Act I, and the orangeade-boy, Jess
Lynch, testified that ten minutes after Act II had started, there was
still no one in LL30. This means that the murderer either had not yet
entered the theatre, _or_ he had come in before but was sitting in some
other part of the orchestra, having a ticket necessarily for another
seat.”
Ellery shook his head. “I realize that as well as you, son,” said the
old man testily. “I’m just following the thought through. I was going
to say that it doesn’t seem likely the murderer had come into the
theatre at the regular time. It’s probable that he entered at least ten
minutes after the second act started.”
“I can give you a proof of that,” said Ellery lazily.
The Inspector took a pinch of snuff. “I know—those cabalistic figures
on the program. How did they read?
930
815
50,000
“We know what the fifty-thousand represented. The other two figures
must have referred not to dollars, but to time. Look at the ‘815.’
The play started at 8:25. In all likelihood Field arrived about 8:15,
or if he arrived sooner, he had some cause to refer to his watch at
that time. Now, if he had an appointment with some one who, we assume,
arrived much later, what more likely than that Field should have idly
jotted down on his program—first, the ‘50,000,’ which indicates that he
was thinking about the impending transaction, which involved $50,000 in
blackmail; then 8:15, the time he was thinking about it; and finally
9:30—the time the blackmail victim was due to arrive! It’s the most
natural thing in the world for Field to have done this, as it would be
for any one who is in the habit of scribbling in idle moments.
It’s very fortunate for us, because it points to two things: first, to
the exact time of the appointment with the murderer—9:30; and, second,
it corroborates our conjecture as regards the actual time the murder
was committed. At 9:25 Lynch saw Field alive and alone; at 9:30, by
Field’s written evidence, the murderer was due to arrive, and we take
it for granted he did; according to Dr. Jones’ statement it would take
the poison from fifteen to twenty minutes to kill Field—and in view of
Pusak’s discovery at 9:55 of the dead body, we may say that the poison
was administered about 9:35. If the tetra ethyl lead took at the most
twenty minutes—that gives us 9:55. Much before then, of course, the
murderer left the scene of the crime. Remember—he could not have known
that our friend Mr. Pusak would suddenly desire to rise and leave
his seat. The murderer was probably figuring that Field’s body would
not be discovered until the intermission, at 10:05, which would have
been ample time for Field to have died without being able to murmur
any message at all. Luckily for our mysterious murderer Field was
discovered too late to gasp more than the information that he’d been
murdered. If Pusak had walked out five minutes earlier we’d have our
elusive friend behind the bars right now.”
“Bravo!” murmured Ellery, smiling affectionately. “A perfect
recitation. My congratulations.”
“Oh, go jump in the bath-tub,” growled his father. “At this point I
just want to repeat what you brought out Monday night in Panzer’s
office—the fact that although the murderer quitted the scene of the
crime between 9:30 and 9:55, he was present in the theatre all the
rest of the evening until we allowed everybody to go home. Your
examination of the guards and the O’Connell girl, together with the
doormen’s evidence, Jess Lynch’s presence in the alley, the
usher’s corroboration of this fact and all the rest of it, takes care
of that.... He was there, all right.
“This leaves us momentarily up a tree. All we can do now is consider
some of the personalities we’ve bumped into in the course of the
investigation,” went on the Inspector with a sigh. “First—did Madge
O’Connell tell the truth when she said she had seen no one pass up or