Lucy was crying softly; Andrea sat up and put her arm around the weeping woman. At the spectacle Bill began to smile rather fatuously, like a proud parent watching the antics of his two children.
“And so,” said Ellery, “I now had a complete portrait of the criminal. I’ll give the characteristics numerically.
“1. The criminal was a man.
“2. The criminal was a smoker, probably a pipe-smoker, certainly heavily addicted to the weed, for only one chronically in the grip of tobacco would have resorted to it on the scene of an intended crime while waiting for his victim.
“3. At the time of the murder the criminal carried a monogrammed or similarly identifiable match-packet.
“4. The criminal had motive against both Gimball and Mrs. Wilson.
“5. The criminal had no writing implement on his person, or the one he did have he preferred not to use because its use might in some way be traceable to him.
“6. The criminal came most probably from the Gimball side of the fence — his deliberate framing of Lucy implied that.
“7. The criminal had a tender feeling for Andrea, indicated by the mildness of his attacks despite great provocation. The criminal had an even tenderer feeling for Andrea’s mother, for he didn’t once attempt to carry out his threat to harm her — an attempt which, had it been made even as a feint, would have very effectually sealed Andrea’s mouth forever.
“8. The blow which killed Gimball, said the coroner, was delivered with a right hand. So the criminal used his right hand.
“9. The criminal knew that Gimball had changed the beneficiary of his policy.”
Ellery smiled. “In mathematics, you know, you can do a lot of tricks with the number nine. Now let me show you a little trick I was able to do in a murder-case with the same number. With nine definite characteristics of the murderer, the analysis became child’s-play. All I had to do was to go through my list of suspects and test each one against the nine characteristics.”
“Fascinating,” beamed Judge Menander. “Do you mean to say that by this method you can reach a definite conclusion?”
“By this method,” retorted Ellery, “I can eliminate every suspect but one. I’ll discuss them one by one.
“In the first place, of course, point number one eliminates in a single swoop all women. The criminal had to be a man. Who are the men? Well, old Jasper Borden first...”
“Oh!” gasped Andrea. “You horrid thing! Do you mean to say that you suspected Grandfather for a single instant?”
Ellery grinned. “My dear child, everyone is suspect in an objective analysis; we can’t afford to be sentimental because one person is old and decrepit and another young and beautiful. As I say, Jasper Borden. Well, you say, he’s an invalid; he never leaves his house; this was the crime of an active man; and all that is quite true. But let’s pretend that this is a detective story where Mr. Borden would probably have been shamming and slipping out of his Park Avenue apartment quite spryly at ungodly hours and doing all sorts of dreadful things under cover of the night. How do we stand, logically speaking, on Jasper Borden? Well, he is eliminated on point two completely: he does not smoke any more, as he told me before a witness — his grim nurse, who certainly was in a position to deny this if it hadn’t been true. Besides, since this isn’t a detective story, we know that Mr. Borden is a semi-paralytic and could not possibly have committed the crime.”
“Next, Bill Angell.”
Bill half rose from the sofa. “Why, you damned Judas!” he grinned. “You don’t mean to tell me you actually considered me a possibility?”
“Of course I did,” said Ellery calmly. “What did I know about you, Bill? I hadn’t seen you for over ten years — you might have become a hardened criminal in the interval, you know. But seriously, you were eliminated on several counts: points four, five, and six. That is, while you might have had motive against Gimball, you certainly had no motive against Lucy, your own sister, whom the criminal framed. Five, the criminal had no usable writing implement on his person. Ah! but you did!”
“How on earth,” said Bill, astonished, “do you know that?”
“You gullible people,” sighed Ellery. “By the simplest method in the world — I saw them. Remember? I even mentioned in our little chat in the taproom of the Stacy-Trent that, from the pocketful of nicely sharpened pencils I saw, you must be a busy man. Well, that was only a matter of minutes after the crime. If you had a pocketful of pencils and were the criminal, you would certainly have used one in writing the note to Andrea. Pencils, with all our science, are untraceable. And point six, the criminal came from the Gimball side of the fence. Obviously you didn’t. So you were eliminated logically.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Bill feebly.
“Now, our pompous friend Senator Frueh. But what have we? An amazing thing! Senator Frueh, I find to my astonishment, fits all the characteristics! I mean, conceivably. But in his case alone one fact is sufficient to eliminate him which doesn’t even appear on the list of characteristics, although I might have included it, at that. He wears a beard. Nothing phony about that brush! It’s been his pride and joy for years; it has decorated newspapers for a generation. But no man with a beard as long as his — it reaches to his chest, remember — could possibly have concealed it, even with a veil. There was one witness who saw the veiled ‘woman’ quite clearly: the garageman. He could not have avoided noticing a beard if the ‘woman’ wore one. The veil didn’t reach below the chin; the beard would have shown. Besides, the ‘woman’, said the witness, was husky and large; Frueh is short and fat. And even if Frueh had shaved off his beard for the crime, he exhibited one afterward. Was it false? Most improbable, with all the worrying he does to it. If there’s still any doubt in your mind, the next time you see it just pull it.
“Now friend Burke Jones. Eliminated at once on point eight. There could have been no chicanery in the report that he had suffered a broken arm in a game of polo — it was reported in the papers and obviously had been witnessed by hundreds of people. But it was Jones’s right arm that was broken. The criminal delivered the lethal blow with his right arm. Jones couldn’t physically, therefore, have committed the crime.
“The portrait was complete,” said Ellery quietly, “and so was the process of elimination. I had painted the picture of only one person, who fitted all nine characteristics so perfectly that there could be no doubt whatever. That person, of course, was Grosvenor Finch.”
There was a long interlude, during which the only sound was Lucy’s tired and curiously happy sobbing.
“Remarkable,” said Judge Menander again, clearing his throat.
“Not at all. Sheer common sense. How did Finch fit?
“1. He was a man.
“2. He was addicted to smoking, and a pipe at that; the day I visited his office his secretary, Miss Zachary, offered me some of his personal pipe-tobacco, blended for him by a famous tobacconist. Now only a hopelessly incorrigible pipe-smoker goes to the length of having his tobacco specially blended for him.