“Then you knew in advance who was the guilty party?” asked the prosecutor.
“Certainly. The plan could not have been concocted without that vital knowledge to build on. How would I have known whose car to let alone if I hadn’t known who killed Gimball?”
“It seems like a nightmare now,” sighed Andrea. Bill said something to her and she laid her head on his shoulder.
“Well, Mr. Queen,” said the Judge, “when am I going to hear that story?”
“If Your Honor please, right now. Where was I?” Ellery repeated for the benefit of the old gentleman and the prosecutor the reasoning he had gone through in the shack on Saturday night. “So, you see, it was evident that the six burnt matches Andrea saw before the criminal charred the cork had been used for smoking. The logical question, then, was: By whom had those six matches been used for smoking?
“On Andrea’s first visit to the shack at eight o’clock that night, there was no one in the place, and the plate on the table, she said, was quite clean and empty. At that time Gimball’s car was parked on the side driveway. When Andrea returned at eight thirty-five, the car was still there, and another car stood before the house, on the main driveway. And inside the shack the plate contained the six burnt match-stubs.
“Clearly, then, those six matches were burned in Andrea’s absence, between eight and eight thirty-five. Who was in the house during Andrea’s absence? Gimball, of course, returned to be knifed. And the evidence of the tire tracks established that the other car, the Ford, was the only car to come while Andrea was away. No one came on foot: for there were no footprints in the mud except Gimball’s. Therefore, since Gimball was killed in the interim between Andrea’s two visits, and only one car arrived in that interim, and no one came on foot, the criminal must have come in that one car. Therefore, the only ones who could have burned those six matches were Gimball and his killer.
“Now, if the six matches had been used for smoking, I could eliminate Gimball at once. He never smoked — scads of testimony and evidence to that effect. That left only the criminal.
“Theoretically, of course, it was possible that Andrea had used the six matches herself, despite what she told us to the contrary. But it was she who found the match-stubs and it was upon her story that the entire logical structure of my solution rested. If I doubted the veracity of her story I simply could not proceed. So, working on the assumption that she was telling the truth, I eliminated her. Obviously, if she came in and found those matches, then it wasn’t she who had used them.”
The old jurist’s eyes narrowed. “But, my dear Mr. Queen—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Ellery hastily. “Trust the judiciary to put a finger on the weakness. But it isn’t a weakness, as I shall demonstrate later. Let me go on. I knew now that the criminal had smoked in that shack before Andrea’s arrival at eight thirty-five, and had used six matches in the process. Well, what had the criminal smoked? I saw at once how important and at the same time arresting the question was.”
“Important,” smiled the judge, “but to me baffling.”
“Had the criminal smoked cigarets? Quite impossible.”
“How the deuce,” demanded Pollinger, “do you arrive at that?”
Ellery sighed. “Six half-burnt matches meant as many as six cigaret butts; cigarets scarcely ever require more than a single match. Six matches, well burnt down as they were, surely implied a multiplicity of cigarets, if cigarets were smoked. Very well. What had the smoker done with those butts? Where had they been ground out? We know that the criminal used the plate as an ashtray, for Andrea found the six burnt matches there. Wouldn’t the criminal have ground cigaret butts out in the plate as well? But Andrea saw no butts or ashes in that plate at a time when the killer could not have anticipated being interrupted and therefore would have had no reason to hide the butts elsewhere.
“If the killer had been smoking cigarets before Andrea’s arrival, the butts and ashes should have been either in the plate on the table, on the rug, in the fireplace, or under the windows outside the shack. But they weren’t in the plate or on the table; there wasn’t a trace of even a single butt or the slightest speck of ash on the rug or anywhere inside the shack — not a shred of tobacco or anything else, for that matter. There were no burns on the carpet, such as might have been made by a foot grinding out a cigaret; and such burns would have been left even if the criminal had ground the cigarets out on the rug and then taken away the ashes and butts so ground. As for the area beneath the windows outside the shack, none were found in the muddy earth or I should have been informed, and I was definitely told that there were no footprints anywhere outside the shack except Gimball’s, indicating that the murderer had not thrown butts or ashes through a window and then retrieved them before fleeing from the scene.
“And so it was quite clear, after this analysis, that although the criminal had smoked before Andrea’s arrival, it had not been cigarets. That left,” continued Ellery with a shrug, “only a cigar or a pipe as possibilities.”
“How did you eliminate?” asked Pollinger curiously.
“Well, obviously a cigar would have left ashes, too, although not necessarily a butt. The same analysis that eliminated ashes in the case of cigarets would eliminate ashes in the case of a cigar. On the other hand, a pipe would leave no ashes at all, unless it were knocked out to dispose of the dottle, which wasn’t necessary; and besides the use of six matches was consistent with the theory of a pipe. Pipes are always going out and having to be relit. It wasn’t essential for me, however, to pin it down specifically to either a pipe or a cigar. The true significance arose from the mere elimination of cigarets, per se.”
Pollinger frowned. “Yes, yes, of course. I see that now.”
“It’s obvious, certainly. If the criminal smoked a cigar or a pipe, then the criminal was a man!”
“Beautiful.” Judge Menander nodded enthusiastically. “Quite so. A woman would naturally be ruled out by that line of reasoning. But all the evidence indicated that the criminal was a woman.”
“Then all the evidence,” retorted Ellery, “was wrong. If you rely on logic, you must stick by it or fall back on mere guesswork. The deduction pointed indisputably to a man; the evidence indicated a woman; the evidence, then, must have been either misleading or false. The evidence said a heavily veiled woman committed the crime; the deduction said: no, it was a man; therefore it was a man dressed as a woman, and the veil becomes important and significant as the essential cloak to a man’s undisguisable features.