“It’s so funny, all this,” said Andrea with a catch in her throat. “To think—”
“The irony of it,” said Ellery grimly, “was that Andrea didn’t remember anything special about the cover of that packet. She saw it, but it didn’t register in her mind, upset and scared as she was at the time. It was the other day, while I was planning our little drama for Saturday night, that I recalled it to her mind by a direct question after I’d deduced the answer; and then, for the first time, she remembered. But the criminal couldn’t take the chance that she hadn’t seen. After all, he had observed her staring directly at it. He never doubted for an instant that she had read what was on it and knew his identity as the murderer. And so I now had another element in the description of the murderer. He was a man. He smoked a pipe. He used match-packets with some sort of identifying inscription on their covers.”
“Remarkable,” muttered Judge Menander, when Ellery paused to light a cigaret. “But surely that isn’t all? I still don’t see—”
“All? Scarcely. It was merely the first link in the chain. The second was forged by that charred cork. I’ve demonstrated in the past that if the criminal used the cork as a writing instrument, then clearly there was no more practical writing instrument at hand that he thought of. I add this last, of course, because of the lipstick which he didn’t think of using, being a man. This meant that he himself carried no pen or pencil on his person at the time — remember, the necessity for writing the note arose unexpectedly — or, if he did have a pen or pencil, there was something about it that made him unwilling to use it.” Ellery paused again. “Pollinger, do you recall my little extemporaneous effusion shortly after the crime, when I pointed out that you could not say who had been killed, Gimball or Wilson?”
Pollinger made a wry face. “I do. I remember you said it would prove important in the solution.”
“How important even I didn’t grasp at the time. It’s proved incalculably vital in the solution. Without this knowledge — in which personality the man was killed — no final logical elimination could have been made. For this knowledge led to the most revealing characteristic of the murderer. The picture of the murderer would have been vague and meaningless lacking the answer to this question. I can’t stress too much the totality of the point.”
“You make it sound portentous,” observed the Judge.
“It has proved portentous to the murderer,” replied Ellery dryly. “Now. In what personality had our victim been killed: as Gimball or as Wilson? I was now in a position to answer the question.
“Follow me: Since the murderer had killed his victim and framed Lucy Wilson for the murder, then he must have known that Lucy Wilson would be believed by the police to possess a powerful motive for the crime. For no one frames an innocent person without knowing that that person has a conceivable and credible motive. The mere fact that Lucy was the wife of the victim didn’t make her in any sense a logical victim of the frame-up. Well, what were Lucy Wilson’s ‘motives’? What motives, in fact, were actually ascribed to her during her trial? It was pointed out by our clever friend here that: one, she could have learned just before the crime that Joseph Wilson was really Joseph Kent Gimball, having deceived her about his true identity and other life for ten years, and that this knowledge would turn her love to hatred; two, that by his death she stood to gain a million dollars. These, it was said, were Lucy Wilson’s motives — there were no others, for she and Wilson had led an ideal domestic existence. But for the murderer to have visualized these motives for Lucy Wilson meant that the murderer was aware of them. He knew, then, that Joseph Wilson was really Joseph Kent Gimball; he knew, then, that at the death of Joseph Wilson, Lucy Wilson would be paid the million dollars of Joseph Kent Gimball’s insurance. To know these two facts the murderer therefore must have learned somehow that his intended victim was both Gimball and Wilson, that the man had been leading a double life for many years.
“But if the murderer knew his intended victim was leading a double life, he also knew that he was killing not Joseph Kent Gimball alone, not Joseph Wilson alone, but both. The man was murdered, then, in neither personality exclusively, but in the two collectively; and how important this is I leave you to judge.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to leave it to you,” grinned Pollinger.
“Pshaw! If the murderer killed Gimball-Wilson, the man of two lives, knowing that he was killing Gimball-Wilson, the inevitable question was: How had the murderer learned of those two lives? How did he know that Gimball of New York, the society man, was also Wilson of Philadelphia, the itinerant peddler? For years Gimball had taken every precaution to keep his double life a dead secret; for years no one suspected; for years apparently Gimball made no mistake and went unsuspected; and Wilson kept his Gimball identity equally secret for the same length of time. He had told Bill here in so many words, according to the story Bill told De Jong and me on the night of the crime, that no one he knew was aware of the existence of the shack. Yet the murderer chose Halfway House for the scene of the crime. True, Gimball meant to reveal his secret to Bill and Andrea that night, but he was murdered before he could carry out his intention. Had he meant to tell a third person, he would have certainly told that third person no earlier than the night of the murder. Yet the murderer knew the whole story. How, then, had the murderer learned it?”
“That was the logical question, of course,” nodded the Judge.
“And there was a logical answer to it,” drawled Ellery.
“But couldn’t he have learned the story,” demanded Bill from the sofa, “by sheer accident?”
“Possibly, of course, but very unlikely. Gimball, we know on good authority, never relaxed his vigilance. The two telegrams, had they fallen into the hands of the murderer, would have revealed nothing but the location of Halfway House — I love that phrase! But if the location of the place had been the only thing the murderer learned, it would not have been enough. The murderer must have known well in advance of the day Gimball sent the telegrams — the day he died — all about the Gimball personalities. He had to know not only the location of Halfway House but the identity of Gimball’s real wife, where she lived, something of her character and background. He had to have time to plan the crime, to find out about Lucy’s car, to learn her Saturday-night movie habit so that he could depend on her probable lack of an alibi, and so on. All this would have taken time. Not a day — perhaps more than a week, if the man were investigating surreptitiously as he must have. No, Bill, hardly an accidental discovery.”
“Then how?” cried Pollinger.
“How? There was one means by which the murderer could have learned which was so plain I couldn’t ignore it. While it’s impossible by pure logic to eliminate beyond doubt the murderer’s accidental discovery of Gimball’s dual-life background, we can discard the unlikely accident-theory for a positive indication, which clearly exists. Gimball was slain very shortly after he decided to make a clean breast of his predicament and tell the story of his double life to representatives of both his families. When you consider that his first step along the road to confession was to change his insurance-policy beneficiary from his false wife Jessica to his true wife Lucy, the fact becomes too overwhelming to be coincidence. Don’t you see? At last there was a record of his double life — nine records, so to speak: the name and address of the new beneficiary on the original application and on the eight revised policies! And then, on the heels of these records, he was murdered. How could I doubt that it was by this means that the murderer had learned that Gimball was Wilson and Wilson Gimball? Anyone who learned of this change, or had access to the policies, could have investigated; learned the secret from the name and address; followed Gimball on one of his stopovers at Halfway House; and in two weeks discovered all that was necessary to plan the murder and implicate Lucy as the murderess.”