“Right,” said Sergeant Voytershack.
“Right,” said Inspector Queen.
“Was it found in the dead man’s hand?”
“It was found on the dead man’s floor.”
Ellery shrugged. “Not that it would change the picture if you’d found it in his hand. The fact is, someone cut this button off something belonging to Marco Importunato. Since it was found on the scene of the murder, the indicated conclusion is that it was planted there for the benefit of you gents of the fuzz. Somebody doesn’t care for Brother Marco, either.”
“Yes, sir, you just hit a couple of nails,” his father said. “Turning what looked at first like a nice clean clue against Marco into a dirty frame-up of Marco. See? Simple into not so simple.”
Ellery scowled. He picked the button up by its rim and turned it over. The relief design on its face formed a conventional frame of crossed anchors and hawsers, with the initials MI in an elaborate intertwine engraved within the frame.
He set the button down and turned to the technical man. “Was a cast made from the shoeprint, sergeant? I’d like to see it.”
Voytershack shook his grizzled head. “Didn’t the Inspector describe it to you?”
“Didn’t tell him a bloody thing about it,” the old man said. “I don’t want to influence his impressions.”
The sergeant handed Ellery a number of photographs. They were largely close-ups, from various angles, of the same object, which was lying on what appeared to be a short-piled rug.
“What is that material the shoeprint shows up on?” Ellery asked. “Looks like ashes.”
“It is ashes,” Voytershack said.
“What kind?”
“Cigar.”
There was a great deal of it. In one picture, taken at slightly longer range, a large glass ashtray in what seemed to be an ebony holder was visible on the rug a foot or so from the ash deposit. The ashtray lay face down.
“Whose cigars?” Ellery asked. “Do you have a make on that?”
“They’re from the same cigars the boys found in a humidor on the murdered guy’s desk,” the sergeant said. “Prime Cuban. The finest.”
“The tray must have been piled pretty high to have dumped this much ash when it overturned.”
“They all claim Julio was a cigar chain-smoker,” Inspector Queen said. “And the maid hadn’t yet cleaned up his library this morning from yesterday.”
“So presumably the tray was knocked off the desk in the struggle?”
“That’s the way it figures. Joe’ll show you the series of photos of the room. Chairs and lamps knocked over, a 200-year old Chinese vase smashed to bits, a rack of fire tools upset-one of them, a hefty three-foot trident-type poker, was the murder weapon-an antique taboret squashed to kindling wood where somebody must have fallen on it-as I told you back home, a donnybrook. What do you make of the shoeprint, Ellery?”
“Man’s right shoe, smallish size-I’d estimate no more than an eight, could even be a seven. The sole is rippled. Might be of crepe. Certainly a sports shoe of some type. Also, diagonally down the length of the sole there’s something that looks like a deep cut in the crepe. It’s definitely not part of the design of the sole. The cut crosses four consecutive ripples of the crepe at an acute angle. Dad, this should have made identification a kindergarten exercise. That is, if you found the shoe.”
“Oh, it was, and we did,” the Inspector said. “The shoe-a yachting shoe, by the way, and crepe-soled, as you say-was found on the 9th floor of 99 East, in a shoe rack of the east apartment’s dressing room adjoining the master bedroom. Size about 71/oC. Fits the imprint in the ashes like a glove. And with a cut in the sole positioned exactly as in the ashes, crossing the same four ripples at the same angle.”
“Marco Importunato’s apartment. His shoe.”
“Marco’s apartment, his shoe. Right.”
“Joe, do you have the shoe here?”
Sergeant Voytershack produced it. It was a common navy blue sports oxford with the characteristic thick crepe sole. Ellery studied the crosscut.
“May I have a caliper or a tongs, Joe-something to pry the edges of the cut apart?”
Voytershack handed him a tool and a magnifying glass. The two officers watched without expression. Ellery separated the lips of the cut and peered into its vitals through the glass.
He looked up with a nod. “Can’t be much doubt. The cut down the sole looks fresh-definitely not an old cut; in fact, it was made very recently. And I don’t see how a slash of this length and uniform depth could have been the result of stepping on something, unless the wearer of the shoe was doing a balancing act on an ax blade. So the cut across these ripples in the crepe was made deliberately. And since this is a mass-produced sports shoe obtainable almost anywhere, making it hard to trace, the purpose of the cut can only have been for identification-to connect the distinctive print the shoe left in the cigar ashes with the specific shoe belonging to Marco Importunato. In other words-again-to frame Marco for his brother Julio’s murder. Has Marco been questioned yet?”
“Very delicately,” Inspector Queen said. “Sort of in passing. In this case, we decided, haste makes headaches. We’re sort of feeling our way around.”
Ellery set Marco Importunato’s shoe down. Sergeant Voytershack carefully stowed it away.
“And that’s the extent of the case against Marco?” Ellery asked. “The gold button? The shoeprint?”
His father said, “He’s also left-handed.”
“Left-handed? Impossible. Nobody stoops to using left-handed murderers anymore.’”
“In mystery stories.”
“There’s a clue to left-handedness?”
“Not exactly.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The crime could have been committed by a left-handed man.”
“And I suppose all the other suspects are right-handed?”
“I don’t know about all the suspects-’all’ covers a lot of ground, and we haven’t even scratched the surface of the potentials. For what it’s worth, Marco’s brothers, Julio who was the victim and Nino who heads the whole shebang, were… are… whatever the devil it is!-both right-handed.”
“Why do you say the crime could have been committed by a southpaw? Where’s the clue to that?”
Inspector Queen’s chin jerked at the sergeant. In silence Voytershack handed Ellery a portfolio of photographs.
The Inspector tapped the uppermost photo. “You tell me.”
It showed a corner of a room.
The picture was not a sample of the lensman’s art by any criterion of esthetics. There was a long desk, heavy-looking, with an oak grain in a feudal finish, extensively carved. A man, or what had been a man, was seated in what appeared to be a swivel chair, midway behind the desk. The view was from across the desk, facing the dead man. The upper torso and head lay fallen forward on the desk top, and one side of the head was caved in.
The large desk blotter and some papers scattered on the desk-fortuitously, one of them on the squashed side was a newspaper-had sopped up most of the blood and brain matter. That entire side-of the head, the shoulder, the desk-was a continuous ruin.
“From the wound,” Ellery said, making a face, “a single blow, a crusher; had to have been full arm. A home run in any park.” He snapped a fingertip at the color print. “Question: If there was a battle royal between Julio and his killer of sufficient violence to shatter vases and break furniture, how come Julio was found seated more or less peaceably behind the desk?”
“We have to figure he lost the fight,” the Inspector said with a shrug. “Killer then forced him to sit down behind the desk, or conned him into it, on what excuse or threat or sweet talk is anybody’s guess. Maybe to talk over their differences, whatever they were… I mean why they fought in the first place. However the killer managed it, it led to his crowning Julio with the poker. It’s the only theory that makes sense to us. If any of this makes sense.”