“Sure—”
“How about the hose drawer? That one. Any brown socks?”
“Plenty.”
“You left out his suits.” Newby was fascinated — puzzled, but fascinated.
“We did, didn’t we?” Ellery said. As usual at such times, there was something of the actor about him, enjoying his performance. “All right, dad, start with Johnny’s conventional suits. Which colors are they?”
The Inspector said sharply, “They’re all in shades of blue and gray. Period!”
“Yes,” Ellery said. “No browns or tans. That’s what kept bugging me, Anse, even though I couldn’t identify it: the basic fashion color brown that wasn’t represented in Johnny’s suits, in spite of the fact that practically everything else in his wardrobe included articles in brown and/or tan.”
“Maybe he just didn’t bring a brown suit up here.”
“Unthinkable. Johnny regularly made the Ten Best-Dressed Men’s list. He wouldn’t have worn brown shoes, or a brown hat, or a brown topcoat, or certainly a brown or tan shirt, with anything but a suit in some shade of brown. If he had brown accessories here, they had to be intended for at least one brown or tan suit.
“But I didn’t have to make a deduction about it,” Ellery continued. “Johnny did have a brown suit on the premises. I saw it with my own eyes. On him. The night he was murdered. He was wearing it when I was skulking on the terrace doing my Peeping Tom act while he held forth to his ex-wives about his plans for a new will. He was wearing the brown suit when he left them for the night and went upstairs to go to bed. That means he took the brown suit off up here, in this room, when he undressed and got into his pajamas. But when he phoned us at the guest cottage and we dashed over here and found him dead — no brown suit. No brown suit in his closet, as we’ve noted; no brown suit thrown over a chair or deposited anywhere else in the bedroom as you would expect after he’d undressed to go to bed — dad, you actually remarked on the neatness of the room, how no clothes were strewn about. You even specified what Johnny had deposited in the laundry hamper of the clothing he’d been wearing: socks, you said, underwear, shirt.”
Newby muttered. “Then what happened to his brown suit?”
“That, Anse, is the question. To answer it you obviously must ask yourself first: who do we know was in this room later that night besides Johnny?”
“Who? His killer.”
“Answer: Johnny’s killer took away Johnny’s brown suit. Q.E.D.”
Newby threw an irritated glance at the Inspector. But Richard Queen was peering into the past. Or perhaps it was the future.
“Q.E.D. my Aunt Martha’s hind leg,” Newby said crossly. “It doesn’t Q.E.D. a damned thing to me. Why? Why would his killer take Benedict’s suit away?”
“You’ve just hit pay dirt, Anse. Let’s go back. What do we know the murderer did after he entered the bedroom? He did three things we’re now sure of: He killed Johnny. He left Audrey’s gown, Marcia’s wig, and Alice’s gloves on the floor. And he made his escape with the suit Johnny had taken off in undressing for bed.
“Let’s concentrate on number three — your question, Anse: why did Murderer, in escaping after his crime, take Johnny’s suit with him?
“Was it because the suit contained something he wanted? No, because if that were the case he had only to take it from the suit and leave the suit behind.
“Or was the theft of the man’s suit meant to symbolize ‘a man’? That is, to point suspicion to the only other male in the house that night, Al Marsh? All the others were women — Audrey, Marcia, Alice, Miss Smith.”
“Then why would the killer also leave the three articles of women’s clothing?” the Inspector objected. “Those seemed to point to women.”
“Disposing of that theory — right, dad. And there’s another objection to that: we didn’t even realize a man’s suit was missing. If that had been Murderer’s intention, he would have managed to call the fact of the missing suit to our attention. But he didn’t.”
“Can either of you think of still another reason?”
After a barren interlude Newby said, “You’d think there’d be a dozen possible reasons for a thing like that. But I can’t think of one.”
Inspector Queen confessed, “Neither can I, Ellery.”
“That’s because it’s obvious.”
“Obvious?”
“What was it,” Ellery asked, “that the murderer took away?”
“Benedict’s brown suit.”
“A man’s suit. What are men’s suits used for?”
“What are they used for? What do you mean, son? To wear. But—”
“To wear,” Ellery said. “As clothing. The common, everyday reason. But why should Murderer need clothing in leaving Johnny’s room after the murder? Surely he came there wearing something. Had he been splashed with blood — was that the reason he had to have a change of clothes? But Johnny’s head bled remarkably little — we noted that on the scene, dad. Or even if some blood had got on Murderer’s original clothing, that would hardly have necessitated an entire change — pants as well as jacket — in the middle of the night, in a darkened house. No, it must have been something else about what Murderer was wearing when he came to Johnny’s room that compelled him to discard it and dress in Johnny’s suit as a substitute. Do you see it now?”
Chief Newby looked helpless.
Inspector Queen exploded, “Hell, no!”
“But it’s so clear,” Ellery cried. “What was Murderer wearing when he came into Johnny’s room that he might have felt he could not wear in leaving after the crime? You still don’t see it? Well, what clothing definitely not Johnny’s did we find on the floor — dropped there?”
“Those women’s things.” The Inspector was gaping.
“That is right. If Murderer came to Johnny’s bedroom wearing Audrey’s evening gown, Marcia’s wig, and Alice’s gloves, and for some reason decided to leave them behind, then Murderer would have required other clothes to leave in.”
Chief Newby exclaimed, “One of those three gals, wearing the gown, the wig, and the gloves, came to Benedict’s room, stripped, left them as clues to spread the guilt, and put on the suit Benedict’d been wearing to get back to her own room in.” His face darkened. “That makes no sense at all. She’d have come in a dress or a kimono or something and just carried the three clues in her hand.”
The Inspector asked slowly, “Are you saying it wasn’t one of his ex-wives, Ellery?”
“You’ve answered your own question, dad. Audrey, Marcia, Alice — none of them would have planned to go to Johnny’s room to kill him under such circumstances as to leave herself without clothes for her getaway.”
“But Ellery, they were the only women there!” Newby said.
“No, Chief, wait a minute,” the Inspector said. “There was a fourth woman on the premises. Marsh’s secretary, Miss Smith.” But when he looked at Ellery he said, “Not her, son?”
Ellery was shaking his head. “You’re forgetting, dad, that we’ve postulated Murderer’s going to Johnny’s room wearing the stolen women’s clothing. That means Murderer was the one who stole them in the first place. But when were they stolen? Audrey reported to us that her gown was missing as early as noon that Saturday. Marcia told us that her wig was gone not an hour later. And when I talked to Alice and she couldn’t find her gloves, it was only midafternoon. In fact, it was during that conversation that Alice told me the others were preparing to drive over to the airport to meet Miss Smith’s plane, which was due in, Alice said, at five thirty.
“So Miss Smith couldn’t have been the one who stole the gown, wig, and gloves. Therefore she wasn’t the one who went to Johnny’s room that night wearing them.”